Problem of Induction

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala. If my mic doesn't turn off, we're going to be diving into the topic of the philosophical problem of induction. And we're going to talk about this topic within the context of its usefulness in apologetics and how the Christian worldview offers an explanation for this philosophical problem.

But before we get into that, I want to give folks a heads up on some interesting upcoming topics that I will be covering in future episodes. So let me just get my little list here. And hopefully folks will find this interesting.

I try to choose topics that I think people will find somewhat fascinating and related to the topic of presuppositionalism and things like that. And so let's see here. So next week, I believe on Tuesday, I will be tackling 50 presupp questions.

So I'm going to have collected 50 questions related to presuppositional apologetics and the presuppositional methodology. And I'm just going to plow through them. So I have no idea how long that's going to take.

Hopefully it won't take terribly long. But within those 50 questions, hopefully I will be able to answer something that is something that has been on your mind if you were wondering about relating to presuppositional methodology.

Then apparently my last video on the death of Tagg apparently triggered a bunch of atheists. There's a lot of comments on that video and a lot of criticisms and so forth, and that's perfectly fine. I expect that when I put a video out, especially being a presuppositionalist.

Not many people are big fans of presuppositionalism, and that's okay too. But there are a lot. You guys can kind of take a look through the comments. There are a lot of bad objections to presuppositionalism, to misunderstandings of what a transcendental argument is and what it seeks to demonstrate.

So many bad arguments that it's tempting. I don't typically interact too much in the comments section because it can become a black hole. Number one, I'm only one person and I can't respond to everybody.

Number two, when you respond to one person, that can often drag you into a long back and forth, which given my own busy life, I don't have time to go back and forth too much. But there are so many deliciously bad objections that you could find in the comments.

Actually, folks who've listened to this channel and you're familiar with presuppositionalism, transcendental arguments, go to my last video and look through the comments. And you can see many of the atheists offering arguments and counterpoints.

And just see if you could identify, based upon your understanding of transcendental arguments, presuppositionalism, see if you could identify the bad arguments, okay? There is really one particularly interesting that I want to spend the whole video on, and that is the issue of replacing God in the transcendental argument with a unicorn, okay?

So we'll talk about unicorns, the transcendental argument for unicorns, and how unicorns provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility. I mean, this is the sort of stuff that we're dealing with, right?

So we'll talk about that in a future episode. Another episode that's going to be coming soon is concerning a topic known as universals. So we're going to be talking about divine conceptualism, universals, particulars, abstract objects, those sorts of things.

I'm looking forward to covering that topic as well. I'm also going to be dedicating a video explaining Cornelius Van Til's view of the rational-irrational dialectic, okay? Now, if you don't know what those words mean, that's okay, but Cornelius Van Til held to the position that given unbelieving worldviews, unbelievers are reduced to vacillating between a rationalistic perspective and an irrationalistic perspective, showing attention in their worldview.

We'll unpack that in a future video. And we'll also be covering the theistic preconditions for knowledge, okay, which is an interesting topic. And we'll talk a little bit about Francis Schaeffer. I know there are some people who associate presuppositionalism or forms of presuppositionalism with Francis Schaeffer.

We're going to be talking about Schaeffer's line of despair. And if you don't know what that phraseology is referring to, that's okay. We'll talk about it when we cover Francis Schaeffer. And I may or may not, I'm not sure, I might be doing a short response video to Lawrence Krauss.

There is a video out there where he is interviewed and he kind of interacts with presuppositionalism a bit. I might do a response video to that. We will see. Okay, so a lot of interesting topics that will be coming up in the near future.

And so hopefully you guys could stay tuned for that. I'm a teacher and today was my last day. So I'm technically on vacation except I have to go back tomorrow because we have to clean out our classrooms and things like that.

But I'm not teaching or anything like that. And then I'm going away for the weekend. And then I come back. And then I will be able to put some content out on a more regular basis for the summer. So super excited about doing that.

And I appreciate folks who have been tuning in and showing their support by viewing, subscribing, all that good stuff. So there you go. So all of that out of the way, let's talk about the topic of this video.

What the Problem of Induction Is and Why It Matters

And that is the topic of the problem of induction. Okay, now if you were to study, for example, the history of philosophy, you will find that there are many puzzles and problems that philosophers have had difficulty engaging with.

But we want to make an important distinction here because a lot of people will accuse presuppositionalists of focusing in on problems in philosophy and exploiting those problems, saying, see, look, you can't answer this philosophical problem.

And so we're going to paste God in that equation and say, look, God solves it. And that's it.

Okay.

And, of course, that's going to be unacceptable to most people. That's, of course, not what we're doing. What I'm arguing is that if we take many of the problems in philosophy, they are problems for certain worldviews, but not all worldviews share the same problems as other worldviews.

So I'm going to argue that from a Christian perspective, the problem of induction, as we'll explore in this video, is not a problem when seen within the context of a Christian theistic world and life view.

Okay.

And so that's not avoiding philosophical problems. It's just showing that while this has been a philosophical problem for many perspectives, it is not a problem for the Christian perspective. And so Christianity provides what we would call the preconditions for understanding induction and the uniformity of nature and these sorts of things.

Okay.

So we're going to unpack that. Well, we're going to unpack it right now.

Okay.

So so let's jump right in. If you are in the comments and you have a question, I do have a list of questions that I'm going to try to get through here at the end of this video. But if you have a specific question and it's not interrupting the flow of me getting into some of the details of this topic, I'll try my best to stop and kind of address the question as best I can.

Okay.

All right.

So let's jump right in.

Okay.

Let me just adjust my screen here. All right. So I think it's important to begin by defining what do we mean by the problem of induction.

Okay.

And so in simple terms, the problem of induction concerns the issue of whether inductive reasoning is reliable or rationally justified. So inductive reasoning involves basically drawing general conclusions from specific observations.

So, for example, if and this is kind of the classic example of this.

Right.

If you observe a thousand white swans.

Okay.

You might infer from that observation that all swans are white and then predict that the future swans that you're going to see are going to be white.

Okay.

Does that make sense? So I observe a thousand white swans. And so based upon the regularity of my observation, I infer that the next one I'm going to see is most likely a white swan.

Okay.

That is kind of utilizing inductive reasoning.

Okay.

And notice how this is very much related to the scientific enterprise because the formulation of scientific laws are often based upon observing regularities and then projecting into the future what is most likely the case based upon our past regular experience.

Okay.

So that is kind of like inductive reasoning induction there in kind of a nutshell. Now, we want to make the distinction then between induction and deduction. And so when we're talking about something like deductive reasoning.

Okay.

What we're talking about with respect to deductive reasoning. This is where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

Right.

Inductive reasoning doesn't offer absolute certainty, but deductive reasoning. You do have a conclusion that logically and necessarily follows if the conclusion if the premises are true.

Okay.

So you have, for example, all men are mortal. Premise one. Socrates is a man. Premise two. What follows from that? Well, it follows logically and necessarily that Socrates is mortal. Now, of course, the truth of that conclusion is going to be based upon the soundness of the premises.

Are the premises true?

Okay.

And, of course, the validity of that argument comes from the fact that in that deductive example, the conclusion does, in fact, follow from the premises.

Okay.

So that's another important distinction to keep in mind when you are examining different forms of argumentation. For example, when we speak of the soundness of an argument, we're speaking about the truth of the premises.

Are the premises true? When we're talking about the validity of an argument, is the structure of the argument correct? Does the conclusion logically follow from the premises?

Okay.

So that's kind of an important distinction, kind of a side note here, between the validity of an argument and the soundness of an argument. But you see there that there is a important difference between induction and deduction.

Okay.

So deduction, you have the conclusion of an argument following logically and necessarily from the prior premises.

Okay.

Inductive reasoning doesn't offer that kind of certainty.

Okay.

There's always the possibility in inductive reasoning that the next swan you see could be black.

Okay.

No matter how many white swans you've seen before, when you are using induction, you do not have a certain conclusion in the sense that because I've observed a million white swans, that therefore all swans are white.

Okay.

And so hopefully you see kind of the distinction there between induction and deduction. So now inductive reasoning is, as I said before, is widely used in the scientific enterprise.

Okay.

And you could obviously, this makes sense because you have the great emphasis upon observation, regularity, the formulation of various laws and things like that.

Okay.

Now, when we talk about observation and inferring based on observation, based upon regularities that we've experienced, we infer about future cases.

Okay.

That, again, is something that undergirds the scientific enterprise. Let's take, for example, Newton's universal law of gravitation, for example.

Right.

That law was derived inductively from empirical observations of the attractive forces between masses.

Okay.

And so we haven't observed every pair of masses in the universe at every point in time, but we've made enough observations to be confident in this universal law. And we make reliable predictions.

Okay.

So that's kind of how science sort of works.

Okay.

So induction is kind of a very fundamental aspect of that.

Okay.

David Hume and the Uniformity of Nature

Now, of course, now when you're talking in terms of the history of philosophy, you take that simple fact of regular observations. We observe regularity. And based upon that observed regularity, we infer with respect to future cases.

Okay.

Now, when we take a look at the history of philosophy, you have David Hume.

Right.

David Hume enters the room.

Okay.

David Hume, famous 18th century philosopher who basically raised what we now call the problem of induction.

Okay.

And so Hume pointed out that inductive inferences depend on a key assumption.

Okay.

So when we make inductive inferences, regular observations, okay, because I observe this regularity over here, I make an inference from that about what most likely will be the case in the future.

Okay.

Hume pointed out that inductive inferences depend on what we call the uniformity of nature. And this principle basically assumes that nature is consistent across time and space.

Okay.

But here's the question. And David Hume asked this question. How do we justify that assumption? Namely, the assumption that nature is uniform.

Okay.

And so Hume argued that we can't justify the uniformity of nature through logic, for example, because it's not logically necessary. The universe could, in theory, behave unpredictably.

Okay.

And so we can't appeal to logic alone. Some suggest that empirical evidence supports the uniformity of nature.

Right.

Because we see. We see. We observe regularity. But, again, this leads to a fallacious form of circularity because we assume the reliability of induction to justify induction.

Okay.

So you see the problem there.

Okay.

And so, again, what I love about this observation by David Hume, and, of course, I'm obviously not a huge fan of David Hume. Obviously, we have very different worldviews.

Right.

But what I appreciate about David Hume, and this is something I suppose we can say about a lot of philosophers, is that the beauty of philosophy is that it causes us to challenge certain assumptions and beliefs that we simply take for granted.

Okay.

Uniformity in nature is something that we simply take for granted. We assume, without even thinking about it sometimes, right, that nature just works a certain way. And that's because of our experience of how nature worked in the past, then that's how it's going to be in the future.

Okay.

I don't fear getting out of bed when I step out of my bed that my feet will fall through the floor. Because the floor that supported my feet yesterday, I'm generally confident that it will support my feet tomorrow.

Okay.

That is the assumption of the uniformity of nature.

Okay.

So, again, but David Hume asked the question, how do we justify the uniformity of nature?

Okay.

And, of course, he pointed out that there is a problem, okay, if you use the reliability of induction to justify induction. All right. That is a form of vicious circularity. Hume highlighted that it's impossible to justify induction purely on experiential grounds, right, because we're going to always have to extrapolate from what we've observed to what we haven't observed.

Right.

And so the problem of induction is and has remained really a very powerful challenge.

The Christian Worldview and Induction

Okay.

Now, it's been so difficult for people to answer is that a lot of people just ignored the challenge.

Right.

They point to the pragmatic aspects of science. If science is undergirded by the assumption of induction and the uniformity of nature, we can't answer how we could justify that. But because on a pragmatic level, it produces so much great results in the scientific enterprise, we don't really have to deal with it.

Okay.

But, of course, that's not true. We do have to deal with it. It is a very important issue. And, of course, contemporary philosophers have tried to address it. And so you do have different explanations as to how people hash that out.

Okay.

But, for example, I agree with Hume here.

Okay.

We can't just justify induction purely on, like, our experience.

Okay.

Because as I said before, we're going to have to extrapolate from what we've observed to what we haven't observed. And so the problem of induction is there. We can't avoid it.

Okay.

Now, from a Christian perspective, if you were to ask the Christian, how does the Christian justify induction? Remember, when we're talking about induction, when we're talking about science, when we're talking about philosophy, when we're talking about any kind of question relating to these issues, it's very important to recognize, and I always say this, and I'll continue to say this because it's important.

We cannot answer those questions independent of a worldview context in which those questions even make sense.

Okay.

So induction, okay, the expectation that the future will most likely be like the past is understood within a particular metaphysical framework, within a particular view of the nature of reality.

Okay.

As Christians, we affirm an omniscient, sovereign God who created the universe. He sustains the universe.

Right.

According to scripture, God is a God of order.

Right.

First Corinthians 1433. He controls nature. Genesis 1 being the creator of nature. He obviously has power over that which he created.

Okay.

He knows the uniformity of nature because he authored it. It is God who places or gives things within creation their unique features such that they act in certain ways and they are regulated in accordance to the things that God has put in place.

Okay.

And, again, if you consider furthermore within the Christian worldview, God created human beings with cognitive faculties designed to understand and interact with his creation. And so our inductive inferences as image bearers, right, our inductive inferences are reliable within the Christian worldview because God made them.

That way.

Okay.

Within the Christian worldview, with our doctrine of creation, providence, and revelation, the problem of induction really isn't a problem at all.

Okay.

So now while the problem of induction is a problem in philosophy, I think the problem is answered when we understand it within the context of a worldview in which there is a sovereign God who created the world in a certain way such that we can make predictions, reliable predictions, about the future based on past regularities so on and so forth.

Now, again, some people think that the Christian worldview doesn't answer the question because we believe in miracles. If God can perform miracles, then can we know that the future will be like the past and God can just perform a miracle and so there you go.

It's different. Well, not so fast.

Okay.

While it is true that as a Christian I can't know 100 that the future will be exactly like the past in some instance, when God performs miracles, the miracles are not random.

Okay.

That's not part of the Christian worldview.

Okay.

The Christian worldview does not posit a God who capriciously and randomly performs miracles such that the world then becomes a random place because God can just do anything at any time and so predictability is out the window.

No.

God does miracles within certain contexts. Matter of fact, if you look at the Gospel of John, for example, okay, in the Gospel of John, miracles aren't called miracles. They're called signs.

Okay.

And what do signs do? Signs point to something.

Okay.

Highlighting the fact that when God performs miracles, it is typically done within the context of pointing to something, maybe some divine truth or the truth of the Messiah or the fact that God is with a certain prophet or something along those lines.

And so from within the Christian worldview, while we affirm the reality of miracles, we can still, given the way God created the world, we could infer that the future will very likely be like the past.

We make room for the possibility for miracles to occur, but because we know that God is not random, we can be highly probable, we can be highly probably certain that the future will most likely be like the past unless God chooses to intervene in some way, shape or form.

Okay.

And so again, so from within the Christian perspective, we have a foundation for uniformity and induction, and then hence, of course, what is those two things undergird the very scientific enterprise.

So science itself fits very well within a Christian theistic framework. Now, we take a look at the atheists, for example. I don't think this is the case at all.

Okay.

Now, to understand why the atheistic world, you can't adequately account for the uniformity of nature or solve the problem of induction. We're going to have to kind of dive a little bit deeper into those worldviews.

Okay.

But and just as a side, I know some people caught this. I said atheistic worldviews. I know there are some atheists there to say, listen, bro, atheism is not a worldview.

It is.

But atheism is not a worldview.

Okay.

Any worldview that has an atheistic bent in terms of affirming implicitly or explicitly that God is not necessary for intelligibility.

Okay.

Any any category of atheism.

Okay.

Regardless of the flavor of atheism you identify as, I would argue, cannot justify induction and uniformity.

Okay.

Now, why do I say this? Well, inductive reasoning, as we said before, involves making generalizations based on specific observations.

Okay.

So, for instance, observing the sunrise every morning leads us to inductively infer that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Okay.

Now, this reasoning relies on the principle, as what we said before, the uniformity of nature. And so the idea that the future will resemble the past and that the laws of nature are consistent over time and space, that assumption of uniformity undergirds our inductive inferences.

Okay.

Let's see here. There's Scott here. I wish someone of the level of, say, Dr. Chris Bolt would write a dissertation on induction and scientific laws. Well, if you're being sarcastic, then that's funny.

If you're not being sarcastic, I think Chris is a friend of mine. He did write a book, I think, on this. Let me see if I can look it up and maybe put the link in the comments here if anyone's interested in kind of diving into this.

Let's take a look here. Chris Bolt. Let's see here. Bolt, the Disney movie. It's funny when you type these things in.

Let's see here.

What pops up on Amazon.

Let's see.

Hollywood heroes.

No.

Chris, where is your book? Maybe Scott, if you know the title, world in his there we go. Let me actually put that in the world in his hands.

Okay.

Let's see.

We're going to get that book here somewhere. Holy cow. Hold up. Time out. Why isn't that book not popping up? It says world in his hands. Let me do this here. World in his hands. I got the whole world in his here we go.

It's 10 bucks on Kindle, and it's at the ungodly price of $27 paperback.

Let's get the Kindle link here.

I know if you guys are like me, you too broke to be spending 30 bucks on a book.

Let's see here.

We're going to copy. We're going to put that right here. I'm going to paste that bad boy.

Boom.

And it is there in the chat if you're interested in that topic here.

All right.

There was an error. So I don't know if it went through. My bad if it didn't.

Okay. Let's see here.

Why Atheism Struggles to Ground Induction

Okay.

Sorry about that.

All right.

So from an atheistic perspective, I think atheism, any form, which we can kind of be more specific, which generally entails kind of a naturalistic, materialistic understanding of the universe. Let's take that version of it just for example.

I think that position struggles to provide a rational basis for the uniformity of nature.

Right.

Naturalism posits that everything that exists is a product of random undirected processes.

Right.

And so given that assumption, there is no intrinsic reason why the universe should operate in a consistent and predictable way.

Okay.

The regularities we observe could just as easily be anomalies in a what we could understand as a chaotic system.

Okay.

There wouldn't be a way to know that from within an atheistic perspective.

Okay.

Atheists might argue that the uniformity of nature is justified empirically. As we said before, by observing consistent patterns in the natural world. But again, we argue that this is viciously circular.

Right.

It assumes the very principle that it seeks to prove. Basically, we observe the uniformity of nature and then we use those observations to justify future uniformity.

Right.

This doesn't provide an independent rationale for why nature should be uniform. It simply presupposes it, which ironically is exactly what many atheists claim we're doing as presuppositionalists. And of course, I've talked about ad infinitum why that's not the case.

Okay.

So from within an atheistic perspective, there is no justification.

Okay.

Now, there are some contemporary ways in which people have tried to solve this problem. I haven't touched on that in too much detail. But just as a general case here, I'm holding my ground. I don't think that an atheistic worldview can provide a justification for these things.

But again, from the Christian worldview.

Right.

This isn't a problem at all.

Okay.

So the Christian worldview, again, asserts that God is sovereign over creation. As the creator, God has established the natural order. He maintains it consistently.

Okay.

Scriptures like Genesis 1 .1 and Hebrews 1 .3 basically affirm that God not only created the universe, but also upholds it by his power.

Okay.

Within that framework, this provides a foundation for believing in a consistent and orderly universe because it reflects the nature of its orderly and unchanging creator.

Okay.

Now, as an unbeliever, you don't have to believe that.

Okay.

But it makes sense within a Christian worldview that we can do science and make reliable predictions and have a foundation for those things.

Okay.

An atheist can come along and say, well, you're just saying that, bro. That doesn't prove anything. It's like from within the Christian worldview, it makes sense. Science makes sense because there's a foundation that undergirds the method.

Whereas in the unbelieving perspective, all you have is arbitrariness.

Right.

I would even argue that when unbelievers assume uniformity and they assume the inductive principle, they're actually borrowing from a worldview that can justify those things because their own worldview cannot justify those things.

All right.

So within the Christian worldview, we can answer these. Christianity teaches that God has revealed himself. He is a God of order.

Right.

This orderliness is reflected in the natural world, which governs which God governs according.

To his will.

Okay.

The uniformity of nature from our perspective, then, is not a random occurrence, but a reflection of God's consistent character.

Right.

And so since God is faithful and unchanging, we have a basis for trusting that the natural order that he established is going to remain consistent.

Okay.

So again, these are kind of simple Sunday school points. It's simple. It's not some complicated philosophical explanation.

Okay.

But in a very profound sense, this is the simple faith of the Christian.

Right.

Why do I expect that the future will be like the past? Why can I make reliable predictions? I don't just appeal to creation to ground those things, but I simply trust that the God who's revealed himself created the world in such a way that those things can be the.

Case.

Okay.

You don't need to believe that, but what happens when you reject it? You lack a justificatory principle to ground, okay, induction and uniformity.

Okay.

Pragmatic, Probabilistic, and Reliabilist Attempts

All right.

So let's take a look at some attempts to answer this question within a more contemporary context. And so from within a contemporary perspective, you have kind of attempts at what we might call pragmatic justification.

Okay.

So from this particular point holds that induction is basically justified pragmatically.

Right.

Because it works effectively in practice. And that's true.

Right.

It aids in facilitating scientific progress and these sorts of things. You know, there's a pragmatic element to it.

Okay.

But again, sorry about that.

My mic. When I flail my arms and stuff like that means I'm Puerto Rican. So my hands move all over the place. I like disconnect myself. So I'm sorry about that. Whoops.

There we go.

From our perspective, I think this pragmatic justification is insufficient because it bypasses the question of ultimate truth for utility.

Right.