Hume — Can experience carry us into the future?

Can we speak of knowledge in ordinary life when our grounds fall short of complete proof?

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Hume divides the objects of human reason into relations of ideas and matters of fact.

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An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · Hume Texts Online critical text with E/SBN paragraph numbering
Locator: E 4.1–4.2
Open source

He argues that judgments about cause and effect are learned from experience rather than obtained by a priori reasoning alone.

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An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · Hume Texts Online critical text with E/SBN paragraph numbering
Locator: E 4.4–4.6
Open source

Hume argues that using experience to prove that past experience will continue into the future makes the reasoning circular.

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An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · Hume Texts Online critical text with E/SBN paragraph numbering
Locator: E 4.18–4.21
Open source

Hume explains the principle that leads us to expect the future after repeated experience as custom or habit.

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An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · Hume Texts Online critical text with E/SBN paragraph numbering
Locator: E 5.5–5.8
Open source

The final section presents mitigated scepticism as joining doubt, caution, and modesty to judgment while fitting inquiry to human capacities.

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An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · Hume Texts Online critical text with E/SBN paragraph numbering
Locator: E 12.24–12.26
Open source

The first edition was published by A. Millar in London in 1748 under the title Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding.

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Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding — first-edition catalog record
Folger Shakespeare Library · 1748 · London: A. Millar, 1748; ESTC T4022
Locator: London: A. Millar, 1748; ESTC T4022
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Jean-Bernard Mérian's French translation, Essais philosophiques sur l'entendement humain, was published by J. H. Schneider in Amsterdam in 1758.

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Essais philosophiques sur l'entendement humain
David Hume; translated by Jean-Bernard Mérian · 1758 · Amsterdam: J. H. Schneider, 1758
Locator: Title page and volume metadata
Open source
Essais philosophiques sur l'entendement humain — catalog record cb33991959k
Bibliothèque nationale de France · 1758 · Amsterdam: J. H. Schneider, 1758; Jean-Bernard Mérian translator attribution
Locator: Translator attribution and Amsterdam: J. H. Schneider, 1758 record
Open source