Monday, October 8, 2007

Past Futures Are the New Past Pasts

Do you find yourself obsessed with Hume's question of what could justify inductive reasoning? Boy, do I have a link for you:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Problem of Induction

If you're tired of that one, there's also a new problem of induction. Or, you could watch this video of Lewis Black describing his failure to reason inductively every year around Halloween:


In class, we talked about how attempts to justify induction beg the question. Here's a dinosaur comic on question-begging. (Click on the comic to enlarge it)

DOWN WITH DESCRIPTIVISTS IN THIS ONE PARTICULAR INSTANCE
Finally, here's a stick figure comic about scientists' efforts to confirm that the future will be like the past.

Science: Confirming Induction For As Long As It's Been Unjustified

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