{"id":811,"date":"2020-02-08T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bhide.net\/?p=811"},"modified":"2020-02-08T10:00:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T15:00:23","slug":"frank-knights-spin-on-humes-induction-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/frank-knights-spin-on-humes-induction-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Knight&#8217;s spin on Hume&#8217;s induction paradox."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span id=\"ember6560\" class=\"ember-view\">Brilliant observation from Knight&#8217;s Risk Uncertainty and Profit: &#8220;We live in a world full of contradiction and paradox, a fact of which perhaps the most fundamental illustration is this: that the existence of a problem of knowledge depends on the future being different from the past, while the possibility of the solution of the problem depends on the future being like the past.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"ember6560\" class=\"ember-view\">I see this as an extension of Hume&#8217;s more famous induction paradox: &#8220;Why should we believe that the sun will rise again in the East tomorrow?&#8221; To say that because &#8220;its always risen in the East before&#8221; is not a reason &#8212; its simply a restatement of the belief. Hume&#8217;s answer is that there can in fact be no &#8220;reason&#8221; &#8212; its a matter of animal instinct. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"ember6560\" class=\"ember-view\">This kind of animal instinct makes many kinds of &#8220;routine&#8221; knowledge problems trivial. The interesting ones become &#8220;when or how might the future be different from the past (or how could we make it different)&#8221;? And whatever mental process we use (eg the application of science) relies on some &#8216;likeness&#8217; with past situations. Note &#8220;likeness&#8221; is crucial. If &#8220;identical&#8221; we could fall back on the simple animal instinct of extrapolation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brilliant observation from Knight&#8217;s Risk Uncertainty and Profit: &#8220;We live in a world full of contradiction and paradox, a fact<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knightian-uncertainty-book-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}