Willard Van Orman Quine

22 robert j. fogelin
becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible,
therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance
of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded
on the supposition of that resemblance. 1
Quine both notes Hume’s despair at solving the problem of induction
and clearly endorses it: “On the doctrinal side, I do not see that
we are farther along today than where Hume left us. The Humean
predicament is the human predicament” (EN 72).
This commitment to Humean skepticism with regard to induction
is, I believe, a fundamental aspect of Quine’s position. Moreover, it is
more than bare acknowledgment of a puzzle that he finds impossible
to solve. Not only does Quine accept Hume’s skeptical argument, his
response to it – his way of dealing with it – is strikingly Humean as
well. This important connection is evident in Quine’s notes for lectures
he gave in 1946 on the history of philosophy. Michael Pakaluk
was given access to these notes and published selections from them,
with commentary, in a fine piece entitled “Quine’s 1946 Lectures on
Hume.” These notes show that Quine had a subtle (and to my mind
correct) understanding of the role that inductive skepticism played
in Hume’s own attempt to naturalize philosophy, or as Hume described
his project in the subtitle to the Treatise of Human Nature,
his Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning
into Moral Subjects.
Quine saw, for example, that Hume’s skepticism concerning induction
was independent of Hume’s specific account of experience.
Pakaluk remarks that “Quine is of course in great sympathy with
Hume’s conclusion that there can be no justification for our inductive
practices.” In fact, the passage he cites to support this says more:
“Hume’s negative doctrine is inevitable, I think, in any thoroughgoing
empiricism; and it does not depend on the extreme or questionable
feature of his particular underlying system of elements and
psychology.” 2 Pakaluk also cites a passage indicating that Quine recognized
the full force of Hume’s inductive skepticism: “The consequences
[of Hume’s inductive skepticism are] that there is no rational
basis for prediction, even probable prediction; no rational basis for
scientific law, even probable law.” 3 As Quine understands Hume’s
skeptical argument, it was intended to establish more than mere
probabilism or fallibilism with respect to causal inferences – a reading,
with Quine, I take to be correct.
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