Abstract

Over the last three years Hume’s use of the term “a priori” has suddenly become very topical. Three discussions, by Stephen Buckle, myself, and Houston Smit, all focusing on Hume’s argument concerning induction in Section IV of the Enquiry, have independently picked up on this question, which seems previously to have gone almost unnoticed.1 That there is an issue here can be seen by examining what Hume says when considering the foundation of our inferences concerning matter of fact; why, for example, we expect a billiard ball to move in a particular way when struck by another: “I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of [cause and effect] is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience … Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. … No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes, which produced it, or the effects, which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.” (E 27, 4.6) In this passage Hume is clearly allowing an object’s “qualities which appear to the senses” as being available to Reason “unassisted by experience”. So what he counts as “experience” seems essentially to involve some memory of prior experience, rather than merely current experience.