Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow

In this lecture, Lee Braver unpacks one of the most striking arguments in the history of philosophy: Hume's problem of induction. Starting with the billiard ball thought experiment, Braver shows that we cannot reason our way from cause to effect without experience. But the truly shocking claim goes further. Even after a lifetime of experience, we still have no rational basis for expecting the future to resemble the past. Every attempt to justify that expectation ends up assuming the very thing it tries to prove, committing the logical fallacy of begging the question. So what saves us? Not reason, but custom and habit, the same mental machinery that drives Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's pigeons. Braver carefully distinguishes between being irrational and being arational, and explains how Hume uses these insights to draw firm boundaries around what human beings can legitimately claim to know, with devastating consequences for traditional philosophy.