Animal Induction

Animal Induction

Hume argued that induction is based on custom not reason. We believe in induction because we are psychologically built that way by nature not by ratiocination. He could have cited the case of animals: they act according to induction by instinct; they were not taught to do so or employ a priori reflection. We could say they have an inductive gene; it’s an adaptation brought about by natural selection. Induction is like a thick coat in the Arctic. The environment calls it forth. We evolved from animals, so our inductive dispositions have the same roots. This is why the skeptical argument makes so little impact on us. We are natural-born inductivists. Popper can’t budge us on this. Even if the uniformity of nature breaks down, we are genetically inclined to induction. In this sense we have an innate inductive philosophy. People talk about commonsense philosophy; we also have an instinctive philosophy installed by the genes under natural selection. Our instinctive philosophy is inherited from our animal ancestors going back a long way. We are not a blank philosophical state. Induction is an “innate idea”. It is like our philosophy of substances—a natural innate cognitive-behavioral scheme. We go by laws instinctively. We have an inductive brain(-stem). Our DNA is inductive.

This doesn’t prove that induction is a valid mode of inference. We cannot use it to prove that the future will be like the past; we might even stop behaving inductively! Just because we have always been inductive in the past doesn’t prove we will continue to be inductive in the future. Nature might also stop being uniform while leaving us still committed to induction. You never know. But we can infer that nature was uniform in the past, i.e., that our ancestors evolved in conditions of uniformity. For there would have been no induction in a world lacking in uniformity, because it would not have been adaptive. Adaptations evolve to suit the world surrounding the organisms in question, so we know our ancestors lived in a predictable uniform world. The inductive gene only gets installed if it is adaptive in the given environment. Hume would have enjoyed the post-Darwinian world of genes and evolution from earlier species.