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David Hume’s homework excuses would’ve been the best. My four-year-old son’s worksheet book has puzzles of the kind shown below:

1, 1, 1, 1, __, 1

🔐, 🔒, 🔓, 🔐, 🔒, __, 🔐
🍏, 🍐, __, 🍏, 🍐, 🍌
🚗, 🚒, 🚓, 🚚, 🚗, 🚒, 🚓, __

.

The idea is to fill the ___ with the most “appropriate” pattern based on what occurred in prior installments. Hume’s entire philosophical shtick was that the past does not necessarily entail the future and I bet, had he been given my son’s homework, he would’ve said:

[I]t is evident, in the first place, that the repetition of like objects in like relations of succession and contiguity discovers nothing new in any one of them: since we can draw no inference from it, nor make it a subject either of our demonstrative or probable reasonings…. Nay suppose we [could] draw an inference, it would be of no consequence in the present case….

Secondly, It is certain that this repetition of similar objects in similar situations produces nothing new either in these objects, or in any external body. For it will readily be allowed, that the several instances we have of the conjunction of resembling causes and effects are in themselves entirely independent, and [are] totally distinct from [previous values]. The[y] have no influence on each other.

Undoubtedly, his teacher would’ve preferred the proverbial excuse: “my dog ate my homework”.

I’m also certain Hume would’ve been given a failing grade.