Abstract

In this book refutations have been offered both of David Hume's conclusion about induction and of one of the premisses from which he inferred that conclusion. By their extreme simplicity, as well as some of their other features, these attempted refutations are likely to excite a suspicion that in this book, too, Hume has been ‘refuted’ only after the manner of Diogenes and Dr. Johnson. If Hume's inductive scepticism were a proposition about the relative frequency with which inductive inferences from true premisses have true conclusions, then no proof of a statement of logical probability could be equal to the task of refuting it. The critic of Hume incurs special opprobrium, mixed with condescension, if he proposes to draw those non-factual premisses from the theory of logical probability in particular. It may also be useful to draw attention again to the limitedness of what is aimed at in the critical part of this book.