Steve Reads

Having discovered Cosma Shalizi’s weblog, now is the time to over-cite it. He mentioned a quote by Bertrand Russell, to the effect that “a special section of Hell is reserved for those who claim to have refuted Hume on induction.” I found the quote funny, so a little googling led me to Russell’s essay “The Metaphysician’s Nightmare” (my cache). It puts a smirk on my face:

There is a peculiarly painful chamber inhabited solely by philosophers who have refuted Hume. These philosophers, though in Hell, have not learned wisdom. They continue to be governed by their animal propensity towards induction. But every time that they have made an induction, the next instance falsifies it. This, however, happens only during the first hundred years of their damnation. After that, they learn to expect that an induction will be falsified, and therefore it is not falsified until another century of logical torment has altered their expectation. Throughout all eternity surprise continues, but each time at a higher logical level.