What guarantees that tomorrow will resemble yesterday?

Hume · · 1748

The fallibilist trusts the method of the sciences, which generalizes from experience: the sun has always risen, so it will rise; this remedy has cured, so it will cure.
But showed it: this passage from past to future cannot be demonstrated. That nature will remain tomorrow what it was yesterday, no experience can establish, since every experience already belongs to the past.
Our confidence in therefore rests on mere habit, not on proof. The fallibilist thought himself reasonable; he finds that his best-grounded knowledge hangs on an act of faith he cannot justify.

Therefore So the revisable knowledge the fallibilist vaunts rests, at its base, on a belief that nothing grounds: his assurance was premature.

Deepenings

Habit stands in for reason

For Hume, it is not reason that makes us expect the future to resemble the past, it is custom: we have so often seen fire burn that we can no longer imagine it otherwise.
This habit is useful, vital even, but it proves nothing: it explains why we believe, not why we would be right to believe.

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