Sunday, April 27, 2008
Probability and Chance
Section 6 of Hume's Enquiry goes over chance and probability. Hume claims that the concept of chance does not even exist. It is our ignorance of the real cause of any event that has similar influence on the understanding. On the other side of the spectrum, he does claim that probability is existant. But I see the subject a little differently. There is chance in probability. If something is in fact probably, it has a chance of occuring. Therefore chance does in fact exist, but chance relies on probability. But then we can look at it from a different angle and say that they are almost the same thing. This is really really confusing so please comment on this!
Of Miracles
Hume infers that miracles are violations of nature, seeing as when you pray to God, you are asking him to violate the natural pattern of something. According to Hume, evidence favoring that a miracle is in fact a miracle will always be proven wrong by evidence of a natural law which has supposedly been violated. This is a very controversial statement seeing the multiple medical "miracles" that have been witnessed over the years (Malignant brain tumors suddenly disappearing, terminal illnesses letting people live years longer than they've been expected to, etc.). Then again, one could say all of those are explainable if examined scientifically, so that statement Hume makes is truly up in the air.
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