As is well known, the Humean account of causal inference gives a central location to inference habits. Some of these habits one can discipline. Thus, one can so discipline oneself as to reason in accordance with the “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”, that is, one can discipline oneself to think scientifically, rather than, say, in accordance with the rules of prejudice, or of superstition. All such judgments, even those of science, are, however, upon the Humean account (...) fallible. Some, or rather very many, have raised the issue about how any such causal judgment or inference is justified. That is, how can such inference habits be justified, shown to be reasonable. Hume meets this challenge by arguing that there are some habits all men do and must have. Because we must have them we ought to have them. They are, therefore, justified. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...) causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction. (shrink)

Exemplification can be found in ontologies from the ancient world, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, and more recent ontologies, in particular those that take what exists to be determined by the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. This study examines some of the ways in which exemplification takes different forms in these different ontologies. Exemplification has also been criticized as an ontological category. This paper examines a number of these criticisms, to see the extent to which they are viable.

It is incorrect to construe Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. Or so I have argued elsewhere. To the contrary, Hume in fact offers a detailed defence of the thesis that the norms of scientific inference, that is, the “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”, arereasonablerules to follow in forming our beliefs. Conforming to these rules in its formation of causal beliefs is astrategythe understanding employs in order to satisfy the end of curiosity (T271). Science is reasonable because, (...) so far as we can, within our fallible limits, discover, it is the strategy of belief formation that is the best means of achieving our end of truth, insofar as the latter is, within our fallible limits, attainable. (shrink)