Sir, The recent discussion by Elovici et al. on “Ethical Considerations when Employing Fake Identities in Online Social Networks for Research ” is very interesting . Elovici et al. raised an important question “Is it legitimate to use fake identities for studying OSNs or for collecting OSN data for research? ” In fact, “fake” is not a reality and this might be problematic. In medicine, “fake” is not acceptable. This is not the same as “placebo”, which is a standard method (...) for management of the disorder of the patients. Also, it is not the “blinding”, which is the standard clinical trial technique. As a worker in the field of medical journalism, “fake” might be classified as a “falsification”. According to the standard international medical journal, the “fake” data is totally not acceptable. However, focusing on the “fake identities”, if it is used in researching, it might deviate the research result. This has to be disclose .. (shrink)

Hume's Epistemological Evolution argues that Hume's Enquiry represents a significant departure from the Treatise in respect of its epistemological framework. The Treatise's treatment of skepticism is an unsatisfactory one, as Hume seems to realize, and he therefore forms a new epistemological framework in the Enquiry. Qu's central argument is that Hume's epistemology evolves between these two works.

Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, 1201-1274's Tajrīd al-ʻaqāʼid; selections; philosophy, Islamic; early works to 1800.

Hume views the passions as having both intentionality and qualitative character, which, in light of his Separability Principle, seemingly contradicts their simplicity. I reject the dominant solution to this puzzle of claiming that intentionality is an extrinsic property of the passions, arguing that a number of Hume’s claims regarding the intentionality of the passions (pride and humility in particular) provide reasons for thinking an intrinsic account of the intentionality of the passions to be required. Instead, I propose to resolve this (...) tension by appealing to Hume’s treatment of the ‘distinctions of reason’, as explained by Garrett (1997). (shrink)

The inoffensive title of Section 1.4.7 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, ‘Conclusion of this Book’, belies the convoluted treatment of scepticism contained within. It is notoriously difficult to decipher Hume’s considered response to scepticism in this section, or whether he even has one. In recent years, however, one line of interpretation has gained popularity in the literature. The ‘usefulness and agreeableness reading’ (henceforth U&A) interprets Hume as arguing in THN 1.4.7 that our beliefs and/or epistemic policies are justified via (...) their usefulness and agreeableness to the self and others; proponents include Ardal (in Livingston & King (eds.) Hume: a re-evaluation, 1976), Kail (in: Frasca-Spada & Kail (eds.) Impressions of Hume, 2005), McCormick (Hume Stud 31:1, 2005), Owen (Hume’s reason, 1999), and Ridge (Hume Stud 29:2, 2003), while Schafer (Philosophers, forthcoming) also defends an interpretation along these lines. In this paper, I will argue that although U&A has textual merit, it struggles to maintain a substantive distinction between epistemic and moral justification—a distinction that Hume insists on. I then attempt to carve out the logical space for there being a distinctly epistemic notion of justification founded on usefulness and agreeableness. However, I find that such an account is problematic for two reasons: first, it cannot take advantage of the textual support for U&A; secondly, it is incompatible with other features of the text. (shrink)

Disputants in the debate regarding whether Hume's argument on induction is descriptive or normative have by and large ignored Hume’s positive argument (that custom is what determines inferences to the unobserved), largely confining themselves to intricate debates within the negative argument (that inferences to the unobserved are not founded on reason). I believe that this is a mistake, for I think Hume’s positive argument to have significant implications for the interpretation of his negative argument. In this paper, I will argue (...) that Hume’s positive and negative arguments should be read as addressing the same issues, whether normative or causal. I will then focus on the Enquiry version of Hume’s positive argument, arguing that it carries a significant normative conclusion: there, Hume argues that custom plays a normative role in justifying our inductive inferences. Given that Hume’s positive argument should be read as addressing the same issues as his negative argument, we should correspondingly read Hume’s negative argument in the Enquiry as having a normative conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine three mutually inconsistent claims that are commonly attributed to Hume: all beliefs are involuntary; some beliefs are subject to normative appraisal; and that ‘Ought implies Can’. I examine the textual support for such ascription, and the options for dealing with the puzzle posed by their inconsistency. In what follows I will put forward some evidence that Hume maintains each of the three positions outlined above. I then examine what I call the ‘prior voluntary action’ solution. (...) I argue that this position in any form fails to account for synchronic rationality. I then raise more specific objections depending on how we disambiguate the position, which can be read as either granting beliefs derivative voluntariness, or as denying their normative significance; the former version is inconsistent with Hume’s treatment of natural abilities, while the latter falls to a regress given Hume’s thesis regarding the inability of actions and passions to be subject to epistemic normativity. I then propose to reject instead for two reasons: first, the weakness of textual support for such an ascription; secondly, Hume’s explicit recognition of the irrelevance of involuntariness to normative evaluation in the moral case. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the epistemological positions of Philo and Cleanthes in the Dialogues. I find that Philo's attitude towards skepticism mirrors that of the first Enquiry, most notably in its endorsement of mitigated skepticism, and its treatment of religious reasoning as distinctly discontinuous with science and philosophy. Meanwhile, Cleanthes's epistemological framework corresponds to that of the Treatise, most notably in its adoption of something like the Title Principle, and its treatment of some forms of religious reasoning as broadly (...) continuous with science and philosophy. It is not merely that the epistemological systems of the Treatise and Enquiry are echoed in Cleanthes's and Philo's positions respectively; these frameworks seem to clarify, provide a substantive basis for, and render more complete their somewhat piecemeal statements on this topic in the Dialogues. Thus, Philo's and Cleanthes's dispute is not limited to the theological, but extends to the epistemological. -/- . (shrink)

Much has been written about Kemp Smith's famous problem regarding the tension between Hume's naturalism and his scepticism. However, most commentators have focused their attention on the Treatise; those who address the Enquiry often take it to express essentially the same message as the Treatise. When Hume's scepticism in the Enquiry has been investigated in its own right, commentators have tended to focus on Hume's inductive scepticism in Sections 4 and 5. All in all, it seems that Section 12 has (...) been unduly neglected. This paper seeks to address Kemp Smith's problem from the standpoint of Hume's treatment of scepticism in EHU 12, and finds an interesting internalist account that makes sense both of Hume's discussion in EHU 12, and his aims in the Enquiry as a whole. Moreover, it is one that is of substantive philosophical interest, having intriguing parallels to contemporary epistemological accounts. (shrink)

This article investigates Hume's account of mental transparency. In this article, I will endorse Qualitative Transparency – that is, the thesis that we cannot fail to apprehend the qualitative characters of our current perceptions, and these apprehensions cannot fail to be veridical – on the basis that, unlike its competitors, it is both weak enough to accommodate the introspective mistakes that Hume recognises, and yet strong enough to make sense of his positive employments of mental transparency. Moreover, Qualitative Transparency is (...) also philosophically satisfying in providing good philosophical reason for why the mental states that are incorrigible should in fact be so. (shrink)

The approximate number system (ANS) enables organisms to represent the approximate number of items in an observed collection, quickly and independently of natural language. Recently, it has been proposed that the ANS goes beyond representing natural numbers by extracting and representing rational numbers (Clarke & Beck, 2021a). Prior work demonstrates that adults and children discriminate ratios in an approximate and ratio-dependent manner, consistent with the hallmarks of the ANS. Here, we use a well-known “connectedness illusion” to provide evidence that these (...) ratio-dependent ratio discriminations are (a) based on the perceived number of items in seen displays (and not just non-numerical confounds), (b) are not dependent on verbal working memory, or explicit counting routines, and (c) involve representations with a part-whole (or subset-superset) format, like a fraction, rather than a part-part format, like a ratio. These results vindicate key predictions of the hypothesis that the ANS represents rational numbers. (shrink)

On the basis of PM2.5 data of the national air quality monitoring sites, local population data, and baseline all-cause mortality rate, PM2.5-related health economic benefits of the Air Improvement Action Plan implemented in Wuhan in 2013–2017 were investigated using health-impact and valuation functions. Annual avoided premature deaths driven by the average concentration of PM2.5 decrease were evaluated, and the economic benefits were computed by using the value of statistical life (VSL) method. Results showed that the number of avoided premature deaths (...) in Wuhan are 21,384 (95% confidence interval (CI): 15,004 to 27,255) during 2013–2017, due to the implementation of the Air Improvement Action Plan. According to the VSL method, the obtained economic benefits of Huangpi, Wuchang, Hongshan, Xinzhou, Jiang’an, Hanyang, Jiangxia, Qiaokou, Jianghan, Qingshan, Caidian, Dongxihu, and Hannan District were 8.55, 8.19, 8.04, 7.39, 5.78, 4.84, 4.37, 4.04, 3.90, 3.30, 2.87, 2.42, and 0.66 billion RMB (1 RMB = 0.1417 USD On 14 October 2019), respectively. These economic benefits added up to 64.35 billion RMB (95% CI: 45.15 to 82.02 billion RMB), accounting for 4.80% (95% CI: 3.37% to 6.12%) of the total GDP of Wuhan in 2017. Therefore, in the process of formulating a regional air quality improvement scheme, apart from establishing hierarchical emission-reduction standards and policies, policy makers should give integrated consideration to the relationship between regional economic development, environmental protection and residents’ health benefits. Furthermore, for improving air quality, air quality compensation mechanisms can be established on the basis of the status quo and trends of air quality, population distribution, and economic development factors. (shrink)

College students have gradually become the main force of entrepreneurship in mass entrepreneurship and innovation. However, their entrepreneurial performance was not as good as expected. We have carried out research to analyze the predictive factors of entrepreneurial performance of college students and put forward targeted suggestions, hoping to be helpful to improve their entrepreneurial performance of them. Based on questionnaire data obtained from 2,097 college student entrepreneurs, this study uses the structural equation model to analyze the predictive factors of the (...) entrepreneurial performance of college students. The survey results of the questionnaire show that both personal and behavioral factors influence the entrepreneurial performance of college students. In this study, personal factors in this study mainly include entrepreneurial willingness, personality, and ability of entrepreneurs. Behavioral factors mainly refer to the positive behaviors of entrepreneurs that can affect entrepreneurial performance. (shrink)

Discussion on whether Hume's treatment of induction is descriptive or normative has usually centred on Hume's negative argument, somewhat neglecting the positive argument. In this paper, I will buck this trend, focusing on the positive argument. First, I argue that Hume's positive and negative arguments should be read as addressing the same issues . I then argue that Hume's positive argument in the Enquiry is normative in nature; drawing on his discussion of scepticism in Section 12 of the Enquiry, I (...) explain a framework by which he provides what I call consequent justification for our inductive practices in his positive argument. Based on this, I argue that his negative argument in the Enquiry should similarly be read as normative in nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of Hume's Law that sees him as dismissing all possible arguments from is to ought on the basis of a comparison with his famous argument on induction.

Hume argues that whenever we seem to be motivated by reason, there are unnoticed calm passions that play this role instead, a move that is often criticised as ad hoc. In response, some commentators propose a conceptual rather than empirical reading of Hume’s conativist thesis, either as a departure from Hume, or as an interpretation or rational reconstruction. I argue that conceptual accounts face a dilemma: either they render the conativist thesis trivial, or they violate Hume’s thesis that ‘a priori, (...) any thing may produce any thing’. I defend an empirical construal of Hume’s conativist thesis. I provide two theoretical frameworks within which Hume’s appeal to the calm passions may be justified: first, by the framework of theoretical virtues, and secondly, by lights of his own “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”. (shrink)

Commentators such as Kemp Smith (1941), Mendelbaum (1974), and Bricke (1980) have taken the distinctions of reason to pose either a counterexample to or a limitation of scope on the Separability Principle. This has been convincingly addressed by various accounts such as Garrett (1997), Hoffman (2011), and Baxter (2011). However, I argue in this paper that there are two notions of ‘distinction of reason’, one between particular instantiations (token distinctions of reason) and one between general ideas (type distinctions of reason). (...) Discussion of the distinctions of reason in the secondary literature has without fail focused on token distinctions of reason, but I will argue that type distinctions of reason prove problematic for Hume’s Separability Principle. I find a way around this problem that is consonant with Hume’s account of general ideas, but which can hardly be said to be an account which he explicitly or even implicitly endorsed. (shrink)

There seems a potential tension between Hume's naturalistic project and his normative ambitions. Hume adopts what I call a methodological naturalism: that is, the methodology of providing explanations for various phenomena based on natural properties and causes. This methodology takes the form of introducing ‘the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’, as stated in the subtitle of the Treatise; this ‘experimental method’ seems a paradigmatically descriptive one, and it remains unclear how Hume derives genuinely normative prescriptions from this methodology. (...) In resolving this problem, I will argue that Hume's naturalistic methodology – that is, his ‘experimental philosophy’, or what has come to be known as his experimental method – consists of the systematization of phenomena pertaining to human nature. In applying his experimental method to normative subjects, Hume systematizes our normative judgements, deriving general principles of normative justification; he then reflexivel... (shrink)

This paper will argue that Hume's notion of the self in Book 2 of the Treatise seems subject to two constraints. First, it should be a succession of perceptions. Second, it should be durable in virtue of the roles that it plays with regard to pride and humility, as well as to normativity. However, I argue that these two constraints are in tension, since our perceptions are too transient to play these roles. I argue that this notion of self should (...) be characterized as a bundle of dispositions to our perceptions, such that these dispositions are durable and counterfactual-supporting. I argue that Hume confused his ‘philosophical’ notion of dispositions, as nothing above and beyond their effects, with the thicker notion of dispositions to which the passions respond—which explains his mistaken commitment to the durability constraint. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that a number of Hume’s claims generate a putative inconsistency with regard to complex ideas and independent existence. I first provide a prima facie argument for the existence of this inconsistency. Then, I examine a number of attempts to rescue Hume from this problem, and argue that each of them fails, before proposing my own solution.

Hume argues that whenever we seem to be motivated by reason, there are unnoticed calm passions that play this role instead, a move is that is often criticised as ad hoc (e.g. Stroud 1977 and Cohon 2008). In response, some commentators propose a conceptual rather than empirical reading of Hume’s conativist thesis, either as a departure from Hume (Stroud 1977), or as an interpretation or rational reconstruction (Bricke 1996). -/- I argue that conceptual accounts face a dilemma: either they render (...) the conativist thesis trivial, or they violate Hume's thesis that 'a priori, any thing may produce any thing'. I defend an empirical construal of Hume’s conativist thesis. I provide two theoretical frameworks within which Hume’s appeal to the calm passions may be justified: first, by the framework of theoretical virtues, and secondly, by lights of his own ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (THN 1.3.15). (shrink)

Although there is consensus that authentic leaders act according to their true values, we have no empirical evidence of what specific values authentic leaders have. While traditional leadership approaches place power at the core of leadership, authentic leadership scholars would argue that benevolence is the value that is central to effective authentic leadership. To date, the questions about whether and when authentic leaders with high power values promote or hurt followers’ performance have not been investigated. Ostensibly, authentic leaders with high (...) power values seem to represent the dark side of authentic leadership. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model and empirically investigate the role that leaders’ power values play in the functioning of authentic leadership. We also test the assumption that authentic leaders with high benevolence values promote followers’ performance. Based on our multilevel analyses of 477 employees in 72 teams, we found that authentic leaders with prominent power values could foster followers’ performance, only when followers’ perceived value congruence was low. Authentic leaders with high benevolence values, however, cultivated followers’ performance unconditionally, regardless of perceived value congruence levels. (shrink)

This article surveys the state of the literature on Hume’s epistemology, focusing on treatments of what has come to be known as the ‘Kemp Smith problem’, that is, the problem of reconciling Hume’s scepticism with his naturalism. It first surveys the literature on this issue with regard to the Treatise, moving on to briefly compare the Treatise and the Enquiry in virtue of their epistemological frameworks, before finally examining the literature with regard to the first Enquiry.

Consistency is commonly taken to be an interpretive virtue in scholarship, but the rationale behind this assumption is unclear. This paper explores the question of why we should take consistency to be an interpretive virtue; it finds that while considerations of accuracy might render the issue underdetermined, we nevertheless have reason to take consistency to be an interpretive virtue on the basis of considerations of philosophical worth.

Much has been written about Kemp Smith’s (1941) famous problem regarding the tension between Hume’s naturalism and his scepticism. However, most commentators have focused their attention on the Treatise; those who address Enquiry often take it to express essentially the same message as the Treatise. When Hume’s scepticism in the Enquiry has been investigated in its own right, commentators have tended to focus on Hume’s inductive scepticism in Sections 4 and 5. All in all, it seems that Section 12 has (...) been unduly neglected. This paper seeks to address Kemp Smith’s problem from the standpoint of Hume’s treatment of scepticism in EHU 12, and finds an interesting internalist account that makes sense both of Hume’s discussion in EHU 12 and his aims in the Enquiry as a whole, as well as one that is of philosophical interest, having intriguing parallels to contemporary epistemological accounts. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the features of CEO equity-based compensation are associated with the agency costs of monitoring in an Australia setting. We find that audit fees significantly increase when firms award large equity grants to CEOs, which is consistent with the notion that auditors perceive higher risk associated with large equity incentives. However, by empirically testing auditors’ responses to the adoption of performance-vesting provisions, we document evidence that it is the use of accounting-based hurdles that potentially encourages unethical reporting (...) issues. We report that audit fees are negatively associated with the use of market-based hurdles, while accounting-based hurdles lead to significantly higher audit fees but combination hurdles lower audit fees. To reduce the possible undesirable properties of accounting-based hurdles, firms adopt longer vesting periods to provide more balanced future-oriented incentives. Practical implications include the remuneration committee being aware of the hidden costs of poorly designed CEO compensation packages and avoiding undesirable ethical implications, particularly, where the CEO has significant power over the corporation. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of THN 1.4.7, which sees his sceptical problem and solution in THN 1.4.7 as taking a broadly deontological structure. Briefly, I read the ‘Dangerous Dilemma’ (THN 1.4.7.6-7) as embodying a false dichotomy between two deontological extremes concerning reflection, that is, thinking carefully about our mental states and faculties. The two horns of the Dangerous Dilemma are as follows: either embracing an absolute duty to constantly and incessantly reflect (leading to excessive scepticism); or (...) maintaining that it is not the case that we have any duty to reflect to any degree (leading to credulity). Hume thus seeks to straddle these two horns and find a deontological middle path. The resolution to this dilemma turns on Hume’s realising that we have a duty to reflect only up to a point. Beyond this threshold, there is a level of reflection that is not required of us, but which is nevertheless good; in other words, such reflection is supererogatory. However, this seems to render excessive scepticism supererogatory. This unintuitive outcome can be avoided by appealing to a suitable account of value beyond the deontological threshold that is founded on usefulness and agreeableness. In the end, Hume manages to tread a path between scepticism and credulity, while nevertheless rejecting superstition and endorsing science and philosophy. (shrink)

There seems a potential tension between Hume’s naturalistic project and his normative ambitions. Hume adopts what I call a methodological naturalism: that is, the methodology of providing explanations for various phenomena based on natural properties and causes. This methodology takes the form of introducing ‘the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’, as stated in the subtitle of the Treatise; this ‘experimental method’ seems a paradigmatically descriptive one, and it remains unclear how Hume derives genuinely normative prescriptions from this methodology. (...) -/- In resolving this problem, I will argue that Hume’s naturalistic methodology – that is, his ‘experimental philosophy’ (THN Intro 7), or what has come to be known as his experimental method – consists of the systematisation of phenomena pertaining to human nature. In applying his experimental method to normative subjects, Hume systematises our normative judgments, deriving general principles of normative justification; he then reflexively applies these principles to the pre-philosophical judgments from which they derive, dismissing and/or correcting those that do not accord with his systematised account. I will argue that Hume’s experimental method, far from being wholly descriptive, is in fact thoroughly infused with normativity; furthermore, the very application of this methodology to our normative judgments reveals Hume’s normative ambitions. (shrink)

Affective shifts have been linked to work attitudes and behaviors recently, but previous researches only focused on affective shift during work, with little attention to affective shifts outside work. Conservation of resources and personality system interaction theories are used to design a 2-week daily dairy study. Participants report how affective shifts outside work affect their subsequent-day task performance, emotional exhaustion, and CWB. As expected, findings indicate that shifts in affect outside work meaningfully impact job performance and work attitudes. That is, (...) when both positive and negative affect upshift outside work, employees perform their tasks better but also experience increased emotional exhaustion. Practical implications and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

Although the importance of inclusion has been firmly supported by prior studies, the question of whether certain subgroups exist in the workplace whose members feel more or less included remains under-explored, limiting our understanding of how an inclusive workplace can be achieved. To address this gap, the current study conducted a latent profile analysis to obtain evidence-based information regarding employees’ sense of inclusion in their organizations. Using a sample of 1,168 participants engaged in multiple industries in China, we identified three (...) profiles of inclusion, with a largest proportion feeling a moderate level of inclusion, a smaller proportion feeling a high level of inclusion, and a tiny proportion feeling a low level of inclusion. The three profiles differ significantly on key variables, demonstrating that the group feeling more included tends to be more aged and tenured, hold a higher educational degree, work in the high-tech sector, and come from a developed area. Such a group also shows more engagement in their work but less exhaustion, feels that they have more opportunities for development, and gains more support from colleagues and supervisors. Our findings point to the existence of subgroups of inclusion within the Chinese context and highlight the characteristics of these profiles, which in turn shed lights on how we can reach the goal of inclusion. (shrink)

This paper addresses the robust output feedback model predictive control schemes for networked control systems with input quantization. The logarithmic quantizer is considered in this paper, and the sector bound approach is applied, which appropriately treats the quantization error as a sector-bounded uncertainty. The presented method involves an offline designed state observer using linear matrix inequality and online robust output feedback MPC algorithms which optimize one free control move followed by the output feedback using the estimated state. Moreover, due to (...) the uncertainty of estimation error, a technique of refreshing the bound of estimation error which involves the quantization error is provided so as to guarantee the recursive feasibility of the optimization problem. The proposed MPC schemes inherit the characteristics of the synthesis approach of MPC, guaranteeing the recursive feasibility of the optimization problem and the stability of a closed-loop system, and explicitly account for quantization error. Two simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. (shrink)

In order to solve the problem of unsmooth and inefficient human-computer interaction process in the information age, a method for human-computer interaction intention prediction based on electroencephalograph signals and eye movement signals is proposed. This approach is different from previous methods where researchers predict using data from human-computer interaction and a single physiological signal. This method uses the eye movements and EEG signals that clearly characterized the interaction intention as the prediction basis. In addition, this approach is not only tested (...) with multiple human-computer interaction intentions, but also takes into account the operator in different cognitive states. The experimental results show that this method has some advantages over the methods proposed by other researchers. In Experiment 1, using the eye movement signal fixation point abscissa Position X, fixation point ordinate Position Y, and saccade amplitude to judge the interaction intention, the accuracy reached 92%, In experiment 2, only relying on the pupil diameter, pupil size and fixed time, fixed time of eye movement signals can not achieve higher accuracy of the operator’s cognitive state, so EEG signals are added. The cognitive state was identified separately by combining the screened EEG parameters Rα/β with the eye movement signal pupil diameter and fixation time, with an accuracy of 91.67%. The experimental combination of eye movement and EEG signal features can be used to predict the operator’s interaction intention and cognitive state. (shrink)

The Title Principle is seen by a number of commentators as crucial to Hume’s resolution of skeptical doubts in THN 1.4.7, thus providing an answer to Kemp Smith’s (1941) famous worry regarding the tension between Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism. However, I will argue that in the Enquiry, Hume rejects both the Title Principle and the role of the passions in his epistemology. Those who think that neither the Title Principle nor the passions play a significant role in THN 1.4.7 (...) will likely take this as grist for their mills. But for those who endorse such interpretations, my argument presents an interpretive burden to provide some explanation as to why Hume might have become dissatisfied with this epistemic framework, abandoning it in his later work. Having raised this interpretive burden, my paper also seeks to bear it by providing such an explanation. (shrink)

This paper will make the case that we can find in Kant’s Second Analogy a substantive response to Hume’s argument on induction. This response is substantive insofar as it does not merely consist in independently arguing for the opposite conclusion, but rather, it identifies and exploits a gap in this argument. More specifically, Hume misses the possibility of justifying the uniformity of nature as a synthetic a priori proposition, which Kant looks to establish in the Second Analogy. Note that the (...) focus on the paper is on Kant’s identification of the form that a solution to Hume’s inductive scepticism must take. In making this point, my paper will look to establish two lemmas: Kant identifies synthetic a priori judgments as a means of justifying metaphysical knowledge in a way that circumvents Hume’s dichotomy between matters of fact and relations of ideas; the Second Analogy looks to establish the uniformity of nature of as a synthetic a priori proposition. However, my paper generally abstains from the question of the tenability of Kant’s argument in the Second Analogy. Doing justice to this latter discussion would require more space than I am able to offer here. My paper therefore has a conditional bearing on the philosophical issue of inductive scepticism. If one believes Kant’s Second Analogy to be philosophically cogent, then Kant offers a successful justification of induction against Hume’s scepticism. If not, then at least one can still admire Kant’s identification of the gap in Hume’s argument, which, to a degree, can be exploited independently of Kant’s system. (shrink)