I am not asking you to doubt that things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future, but you cannot claim that your non-doubt is founded in empiricism.
Can’t I though? I can empirically observe that for any year N between N=1800 (or less) and N=2000, general laws that held before N usually held after N, and further, we can empirically find heuristics for what kinds of laws tend to hold up (starting, obviously, with the laws of physics).
Our ability to observe history is limited, though, and maybe that’s a big problem?
It’s just that you end up in circular reasoning in that case, because you have to start with the view that things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future, then you see that this principle itself has worked in the past, then on the basis of the view you already started with as a premise you conclude that therefore this view that has worked in the past (that things that have worked in past will continue to work in the future) will continue to work in the future.
It’s like if I would claim to you that things that have never worked in the past will tend to work in the future, and you ask why, and I say, well, because this view has never worked in the past, therefore it will work in the future. In order to reach that conclusion I had to start out by assuming the thing itself.
The starting point here is not “things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future”. The starting point is induction: when we see a pattern, the we expect it is likely to continue. For instance, if we take a random sampling of 10 balls from an urn and they are all blue, I predict the next one is blue with some probability around 95% (I’m not sure what theory says my confidence should be). That’s induction.
And the more reliable the pattern is, the more we expect it to continue. In this case the pattern holds over all the Ns we have information about, therefore we expect it to hold for larger N too, especially because we have no reason to think there is anything special about N > 13.8 billion as compared to N < 13.8 billion.
“Empirical” results are inductive by definition, and while we can see that induction works by induction, I’m not arguing that induction proves itself to work, just that “things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future” is an ordinary inductive result like any other.
Can’t I though? I can empirically observe that for any year N between N=1800 (or less) and N=2000, general laws that held before N usually held after N, and further, we can empirically find heuristics for what kinds of laws tend to hold up (starting, obviously, with the laws of physics).
Our ability to observe history is limited, though, and maybe that’s a big problem?
It’s just that you end up in circular reasoning in that case, because you have to start with the view that things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future, then you see that this principle itself has worked in the past, then on the basis of the view you already started with as a premise you conclude that therefore this view that has worked in the past (that things that have worked in past will continue to work in the future) will continue to work in the future.
It’s like if I would claim to you that things that have never worked in the past will tend to work in the future, and you ask why, and I say, well, because this view has never worked in the past, therefore it will work in the future. In order to reach that conclusion I had to start out by assuming the thing itself.
Interested in your thoughts.
The starting point here is not “things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future”. The starting point is induction: when we see a pattern, the we expect it is likely to continue. For instance, if we take a random sampling of 10 balls from an urn and they are all blue, I predict the next one is blue with some probability around 95% (I’m not sure what theory says my confidence should be). That’s induction.
And the more reliable the pattern is, the more we expect it to continue. In this case the pattern holds over all the Ns we have information about, therefore we expect it to hold for larger N too, especially because we have no reason to think there is anything special about N > 13.8 billion as compared to N < 13.8 billion.
“Empirical” results are inductive by definition, and while we can see that induction works by induction, I’m not arguing that induction proves itself to work, just that “things that have worked in the past will continue to work in the future” is an ordinary inductive result like any other.