Page 17 - Logical and Spiritual Reflections

HUME’S PROBLEMS WITH INDUCTION 13

methodology, for both ordinary and scientific thought, whatever the domain under
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investigation .
Indeed, we could construe this principle of induction as the fourth law of thought. Just as
the three laws proposed by Aristotle are really three facets of one and the same law, so also
this fourth law should be viewed as implicit in the other three. Induction being the most
pragmatic aspect of logic, this principle is the most practical of the foundations of rational
discourse.
The principle of induction is a phenomenological truth, because it does not presume at the
outset that the givens of appearance are real or illusory, material or mental, full or empty,
or what have you. It is a perfectly neutral principle, without prejudice as to the eventual
content of experience and rational knowledge. It is not a particular worldview, not an a
priori assumption of content for knowledge.

However, in a second phase, upon reflection, the same principle favors the option of reality
over that of illusion as a working hypothesis. This inbuilt bias is not only useful, but
moreover (and that is very important for skeptics to realize) logically rock solid, as the
following reasoning clearly shows:

This principle is self-evident, because its denial is self-contradictory. If someone says that
all appearance is illusory, i.e. not real, which means that all our alleged knowledge is
false, and not true, that person is laying claim to some knowledge of reality (viz. the
knowledge that all is unreal, unknowable) – and thus contradicting himself. It follows that
we can only be consistent by admitting that we are indeed capable of knowing some things
(which does not mean everything).

It follows that the initial logical neutrality of appearance must be reinterpreted as in all
cases an initial reality that may be demoted to the status of illusion if (and only if) specific
reasons justify it. Reality is the default characterization, which is sometimes found illusory.
Knowledge is essentially realistic, though in exceptional cases it is found to be unrealistic.
Such occasional discoveries of error are also knowledge, note well; they are not over and
above it.

If we did not adopt this position, that appearance is biased towards reality rather than
illusion, we would be stuck in an inextricable agnosticism. Everything would be “maybe
real, maybe illusory” without a way out. But such a problematic posture is itself a claim of
knowledge, just like the claim that all is illusory, and so self-inconsistent too. It follows
that the interpretation of appearance as reality until and unless otherwise proved is the only
plausible alternative.
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I stress that here, to forestall any attempt to split ordinary and scientific thought apart. We
should always stress their continuity. The difference between them is (theoretically, at least) only
one of rigor, i.e. of effort to ensure maximal adherence to logic and fact. This only means, at most,
that more ordinary people fail to look carefully and think straight than do most scientists – but both
groups are human. Another important thing to stress is that this method is the same for knowledge
of matter or mind, of earthly issues or metaphysical ones, and so forth. The principle is the same,
whatever the content.
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Worth also stressing here is the importance of working hypotheses as engines of active
knowledge development. A skeptical or agnostic posture is essentially static and passive; taken
seriously, it arrests all further development. Scientists repeatedly report the crucial role played by
their working hypothesis, how it helped them to search for new data that would either confirm or
refute it, how it told them what to look for and where and how to look (see for instance, Gould, p.
172). This is true not only of grand scientific theories, but of ordinary everyday concepts.