Nicholas Sansolis MODPHIL A51

12/04/11

Knowledge, Mind, and Time Travel

The Knowledge, Mind, and Time Travel talk that took place on November 29, 2011 discussed some answers and implications to classic questions such as How do you know that you know?, What is the nature of the mind?, and Is time travel possible?. The first speaker of the talk was Dr. Mansukhani. His topic dealt with David Hume and knowledge, mainly the Problem of Induction. Ive known about David Hume for some time now, but this part of the talk taught me that although Hume contributed to epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of science, he was still more popular in his time for his work on The History of England. The only prior knowledge that I could recall of Hume was his empiricist rule, his analysis on causality on why causality is a habit of the human mind, and how scientific knowledge is only the product of our sentiments, passions, and desires. Dr. Rajs talk made me realize how David Hume single-handedly destroyed the foundation of science. Aside from his aforementioned claim on causality, Hume also created the so called mother of philosophical problems that questions the reliability of science and if the process of induction can really lead to knowledge. I didnt really understand or see what the problem was at first, but then Dr. Raj provided an example. All swans that have been observed so far have been white. Therefore, all swans are white. He then related this to the Principle of the

Uniformity of Nature, which states that the future will always resemble the past. Inductive deductions are then justified for nature is uniform. Now this is where I really got blown away. Dr. Raj explained that we justify our inductive inferences by saying that nature is uniform. We justify that claim by making an inductive inference. So in reality, this is circular reasoning. Induction therefore cannot be justified except through induction itself. All scientific claims are now put into question, since its always possible that the future will not resemble the past. He even went on to analyze something as common as gravity. Sure, you may observe a pen falling on one day, and even the next. But someday, the laws of gravity may reverse, and that pen will do something entirely different from your expectations. My personal favorite example is the existence of a galaxy. Galaxies can exist for billions of years, but can blip out of existence anytime. I thought this was a good start to the discussion, as my fellow philosophy majors and I were pleased to find out that there is more to Hume than just necessary connections. I would have to admit that I have never viewed scientific claims and the infamous scientific method in this way before; this just goes to show how much I still have to learn in this course. During the end of this portion of the discussion, I could imagine the scientific community during Humes time and how impacted they must have been from his bold claims. I also got the feeling that Hume rather enjoyed attacking common concepts. So if Humes claims were true, and that induction is guilty of using circular reasoning, then induction really cannot lead to true knowledge. To me, it feels reasonable to justify our beliefs on memories and experiences of past events, and I can

see why it is so easy to assume that the same thing will happen again and again in the future. Even though Hume may have made a strong point, one cannot deny the power and accuracy of science. Now the only questions I have left are, are there any real certainties out there? How can we be sure of anything for that matter? Is there any real way to justify a prediction or conclusion to an inductive argument?