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Students Zone / Questions / Chapter 10: Explanations: Purposive and Casual Explanations

1. What reasons do we have for believing that the future will resemble the past?

2. ‘We can observe a constant conjunction between events of particular kinds, but we can never observe a cause; hence there are no real causes.’ Discuss.

3. ‘Induction cannot be justified, but this does not matter since we have no alternative to using inductive argument.’ Discuss.

4. What is the relation between explanation and prediction?

5. What does it mean to say of a certain kind of event that it causes another kind of event to take place?

6. Is it reasonable to assume the sun will rise tomorrow?

7. How would you respond to someone who argues that as all inductive arguments have worked so far the next will as well?

8. How would you distinguish between causal sequences and coincidences?

9. Critically examine Hume’s analysis of the notion of causation.