Q&A: The Problem of Induction
The Problem of Induction
Question
What logical or scientific solution is there to the problem of induction?
How do we know philosophically that we exist?
How can we rely on our five senses?
These questions are really troubling me right now.
Thank you for the response.
Answer
I could ask you how you expect to receive an answer that would not itself raise these very doubts. A complete skeptic cannot accept any argument whatsoever, because he can always doubt that too.
The only way is to help you examine yourself and see whether you are really a skeptic. As a first step, I’ll ask you: whom are these doubts troubling? You wrote that they are troubling "me." Who is that supposed to mean?
Discussion on Answer
And that is why I asked who that "I" is.
What do you mean, who am I?
I think he meant: how do we know that other people besides him exist, not he himself as cogito.
You wrote that you are wondering whether you exist. So I asked who the person is that is troubled by these questions, if you do not exist. Me?
When I wrote that these questions are troubling me, I meant that I can’t stop thinking about them.