Hume’s theorem

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3):339-346 (2013)
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Abstract

A common criticism of Hume’s famous anti-induction argument is that it is vitiated because it fails to foreclose the possibility of an authentically probabilistic justification of induction. I argue that this claim is false, and that on the contrary, the probability calculus itself, in the form of an elementary consequence that I call Hume’s Theorem, fully endorses Hume’s argument. Various objections, including the often-made claim that Hume is defeated by de Finetti’s exchangeability results, are considered and rejected.

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Colin Howson
Last affiliation: London School of Economics

Citations of this work

Does information inform confirmation?Colin Howson - 2016 - Synthese 193 (7):2307-2321.

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References found in this work

Informal Rigour and Completeness Proofs.Georg Kreisel - 1967 - In Imre Lakatos (ed.), Problems in the philosophy of mathematics. Amsterdam,: North-Holland Pub. Co.. pp. 138--157.
De finetti, countable additivity, consistency and coherence.Colin Howson - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (1):1-23.
The rule of succession.Sandy L. Zabell - 1989 - Erkenntnis 31 (2-3):283 - 321.
Must the logical probability of laws be zero?C. Howson - 1973 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (2):153-163.

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