Duncan-esque

No, not King Duncan. I mean the infamous David Duncan. I'm still reading up on Ayn Rand (I'll probably rant more about that sometime in the near future), but it's leading me on a philosophical journey through wikipedia onto different philosophers etc. Who knew engaging one's mind could be enjoyable? (David, apparently. By the way, I have 6 windows open now. David usually ends his library sessions with 12, so we'll see how this turns out). Anywho, I wanted to post a "brief insert" from an entry about David Hume taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume:

"The Problem of Induction

We all think that the past acts as a reliable guide to the future. For example, physicists' laws of planetary orbits work for describing past planetary behavior, so we presume that they'll work for describing future planetary behavior as well. But how can we justify this presumption – the principle of induction? Hume suggested two possible justifications and rejected them both:

1. The first justification states that, as a matter of logical necessity, the future must resemble the past. But, Hume pointed out, we can conceive of a chaotic, erratic world where the future has nothing to do with the past – or, more tamely, a world just like ours right up until the present, at which point things change completely. So nothing makes the principle of induction logically necessary.
2. The second justification, more modestly, appeals only to the past reliability of induction – it's always worked before, so it will probably continue to work. But, Hume pointed out, this justification uses circular reasoning, justifying induction by an appeal that requires induction to gain any force.

The problem of justifying induction remains with us. Hume seems to hold the view that we (as well as other animals) have an instinct-like belief that the future will resemble the past based on the development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot eliminate but which we cannot prove true by any kind of argument, deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief in the reality of the external world."

I found it amusing because I unfortunately follow determinism, the doctrine which states that free will does not exist because the future is merely a result of the past. Hume rejects this completely for the reasons stated above, but it is interesting to note that with the above in mind, one can be of two mindsets:

1.If you believe Hume's arguments, it isn't logical to believe that one can use past results to predict the future, ie even though David Sugue is standing right next to you and you are wearing a low cut top, he will not necessarily look at your boobs.

2.Or you can disregard Hume and say that yes, past events can be used to predict the future and David most certainly will stare at your bosom, even ifthat bosom belongs to one Derek Bast. That means you should follow determinism.

Just food for thought. David, eyes up here! I feel dirty...

Edit: Heh, read the article and you'll see I predicted the argument that followed (I hadn't read the whole article when I posted before). Creepy, eh?

Oh, and this will blow your mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum