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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
“Nay, I will go farther, and assert, that he could not so much as prove by any probable arguments, that the future must be conformable to the past. All probable arguments are built on the supposition, that there is this conformity betwixt the future and the past, and therefore can never prove it. This conformity is a matter of fact, and if it must be proved, will admit of no proof but from experience. But our experience in the past can be a proof of nothing for the future, but upon a supposition, that there is a resemblance betwixt them. This therefore is a point, which can admit of no proof at all, and which we take for granted without any proof.”
David Hume, An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature p. 15
In Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits Bertrand Russell recognizes and attempts to deal with what is one of the central questions of philosophy since Descartes, “The relation between individual experience and the general body of scientific knowledge.” He states that his purpose is “to discover the minimum principles required to justify scientific inferences.” The search for such principles arises from his belief that “data are private and individual.” He has only scorn for those who, “finding these problems distasteful” have “tried to deny that these problems exist.”
Read in part at the meetings of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, 29 December, 1949.
1 Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster. New York 1948. p. xi. (All later references by page alone are to this book.)
2 p. xiii cf. G. H. von Wright, Logical Problem of Induction, Helsinki 1941, for a clearheaded and detailed discussion of the question.
3 p. xii.
4 p. xii.
5 p. 183.
6 p. 506.
7 p. 418. Cf. pp. 336–7.
8 p. 505.
9 p. 181.
10 p. 456.
11 p. 359. (One is reminded of Hume's statement: “If we believe fire warms … it is because it costs us too many pains to think otherwise.” p. 270 Treatise. Selby-Bigge Edition.)
12 Problems of Philosophy, p. 175.
13 Ibid., p. 184.
14 Ibid., p. 232.
15 pp. 131–50. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. vol. 36.
16 For another statement of this see W. E. Johnson, Logic, Vol. II, Ch. VIII.
17 p. 407.
18 p. 408.
19 p. 436.
20 p. 436.
21 J. M. Keynes, Treatise on Probability, p. 258.
22 p. 409.
23 p. 444.
24 p. 439.
25 p. 488.
26 p. 489.
27 p. 471.
28 p. 492. cf. p. 471 #1.
29 p. 493.
30 p. 462. cf. p. 458, p. 471, and p. 484.
31 p. 381.
32 p. 343.
33 Problems of Philosophy, pp. 105–6.
34 p. 451.
35 p. 402.
36 p. 439.
37 p. 438.
38 pp. 438–9.
39 p. 439.
40 p. 496.
41 p. 496.
42 p. 494.
43 p. 507.
44 p. 314, p. 458.
45 p. vi.
46 p. 507.
47 H. Feigl, “The Logical Character of the Principle of Induction.” Reprinted from Philosophy of Science, vol. I in Feigl and Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis. N. Y. 1948. p. 303.
48 ibid., p. 304.
49 p. 360.
50 M. Black. “The Justification of Induction”, Library of the Xth International Congress of Philosophy. Amnterdam. 1948. vol. I, p. 59.
51 op. cit., p. 302.
52 David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature. (Selby-Bigge ed.) p. 212.
53 cf. N. R. Campbell, Physics: the Elements. Cambridge. 1920. F. P. Ramsey, “Theories” in Foundations of Mathematics. London. 1931. G. Bergmann, “Outline of An Empiristic Philosophy of Physics.” American Journal of Physics, vol. 11, pp. 248–58 and 335–42. E. Nagel, “The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural Sciences” in Symposium on Science and Civilization, ed. R. C. Stauffer. Madison, Wisconsin. 1949.
54 Our Knowledge of the External World. 2nd ed. N. Y. 1929. p. 259.