Hume's defence of causal inference

by Wilson, Fred

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) has long been considered a sceptic on the subject of induction or causal inference. In this book, Fred Wilson convincingly reconstructs the Humean position, showing that Hume was in fact able to defend causal inference as a reasonable practice by using an alternative set of cognitive standards. Wilson demonstrates the workability of Hume's approach to causal reasoning by relating it to more recent discussions, for example, to Bayesian views of scientific inference and to Kuhn's account of scientific rationality. He also presents a variety of intriguing related topics, including a detailed discussion of Hume's treatment of miracles. As a whole, this work successfully argues that insofar as Hume presented philosophy with the problem of induction, it is also true that he solved it.