Apriority, Reason, and Induction in Hume

Abstract

I argue that Hume employs a notion of the a priori that, though unfamiliar today, was standard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On this notion of the a priori , to know something a priori is to know it from the grounds that make it true—that is, from grounds that do not merely establish that it is true, but explain why it is true. I am particularly concerned to show that Hume uses this notion of the a priori in discussing the nature of inductive—or in his terms, probable—reasoning in Section IV of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding . For recognizing this point helps to clarify the problem about the rational justification of induction that Hume develops over the course of this discussion.

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