Why is the belief that the Sun will rise tomorrow an example of induction?
The belief that the Sun will rise tomorrow is a classic example of induction because it relies on reasoning from past observations to predict future events.12
Inductive reasoning involves moving from the observed to the unobserved. In this case, one observes that the Earth has turned on its axis every 24 hours in the past and concludes that it will continue to do so in the future. As the philosopher David Hume noted, this inference assumes that nature is uniform and that the future will resemble the past.12
However, this belief is considered a central part of the problem of induction. Hume argued that any attempt to justify this assumption by pointing to past instances where the future resembled the past is circular, as it presupposes the very principle it seeks to prove. Consequently, while humans naturally form such beliefs, Hume maintained that they cannot be rationally justified, as inductive inferences only provide probability rather than the certainty found in deductive logic.12