David Hume's skepticism about induction

This is about induction in the way Hume understood it; by which he meant inference to the best explanation. <br><br>Anyway I'm having trouble in dealing wit his claim that there is no rigorous grounds for connecting cause and effect. but is he right about that? Here are his reasons in his own words.<br><br>>1<br><br>Let men do the best they can, these objects, influences of the first kind, will never become objects of reasoning. Hang the causes of the first kind as we may in spirit of curiosity, they pass all our comprehension and scrutiny; we can never attain further than experience.<br><br>>2<br><br>But when we work upon body by body, we only perceive two objects, without observing in these any particular connection betwixt them, further than what experience has taught us. When we have struck a blow with a hammer against a stone, we did not attain to the idea of this fact, otherwise than by means of experience; and even when this fact is present to the mind, "tis impossible for us to go beyond it, further than we are warranted by experience. In no single instance the ultimate connexion depends on inward evidence or absolute necessity. Facts are what the understanding scarcely ever considers.<br><br>>3<br><br>Shall we then rest our belief of that connexion on the inference from past to future, without any farther argument or evidence? But how do we arrive at that inference? Only by experience; and even after we arrive at it, is the experience of one an argument for another?<br><br>>4<br><br>Many are apt not to perceive this, because of the terms they employ. They do not understand their own meaning; they seem to be satisfied with saying that one event in the course of nature has been constantly joined with another, without any farther scrutiny. But to satisfy ourselves on this head, let us consider, that joining or connexion is the very circumstance which we can't comprehend.<br><br>>5<br><br>For what is our idea of connexion, when we examine it to the bottom, but either an incomprehensible necessity, or something of which we can have no experience or idea?<br><br>>6<br><br>As to what may be said, that the connexion betwixt motives and actions has the same constancy as what we observe betwixt cause and effect, and therefore that it has the same reality, I would have them point out a like constancy in any connexion of body and body.<br><br>>7<br><br>There is no constant conjunction, wherein a man is absolutely and universally inactive. In sleeping, in fits, in madness, a man performs many actions, and yet in doing of them is not active.<br><br>>8<br><br>There may, therefore, be, or must be, in every action something active, and likewise something upon which that active quality is to be exerted.<br><br>>9<br><br>Wherever, therefore, we may have reason to infer that in some instances there is not matter of fact, and that there can proceed no action of body and body, there also we have reason to conclude there is no active power.<br><br>>10<br><br>Now I ask whether we have not the best reason in the world to draw this inference; I mean that there is no such thing as active power in matter; since we find no such constant conjunction, in the one case, as in the other. It has no invariable, and it has no universal effect, nor more is it reducible to a general rule, than profusion to avarice, or cowardice to courage.<br><br>>11<br><br>I hope no one will here pretend to furnish me, from the analogy of nature, with an idea of power in a moving body, since no one has an idea of the power that sets it in motion. In reality, 'tis not possible for us to have any idea of power and efficacy different from what is derived from a multiplication of those objects, and what is attained by their constant union.<br><br>David Hume's skepticism about induction is about whether induction is justified or not, in other words, can one apply past experience to future experiences? <br><br>Anyway I was wondering if anyone here has an argument against his skepticism, or is his skepticism about induction valid?