I had trouble understanding the quote out of context. The first sentence is fine. But, despite a prior understanding of Hume’s argument, I couldn’t see how Aretae got from the first sentence to the conclusion that “Hume’s argument goes up in smoke”. On the contrary, Hume’s point was that the connections we make in our minds might have little similarity to the actual connections, if any, that exist among things in the external world.
I had to go to the context to see that Aretae is making Hume out to be some kind of a-priorist. Aretae concludes that general arguments against a-priorists are therefore arguments against Hume. This is a bizarre misreading of Hume. Hume’s problem of induction is itself an attack on a-priorism. He refers to a-priori arguments only to show that they do not suffice to justify induction. This was big news in a day when practically all intellectuals were a-priorists.
I had trouble understanding the quote out of context. The first sentence is fine. But, despite a prior understanding of Hume’s argument, I couldn’t see how Aretae got from the first sentence to the conclusion that “Hume’s argument goes up in smoke”. On the contrary, Hume’s point was that the connections we make in our minds might have little similarity to the actual connections, if any, that exist among things in the external world.
I had to go to the context to see that Aretae is making Hume out to be some kind of a-priorist. Aretae concludes that general arguments against a-priorists are therefore arguments against Hume. This is a bizarre misreading of Hume. Hume’s problem of induction is itself an attack on a-priorism. He refers to a-priori arguments only to show that they do not suffice to justify induction. This was big news in a day when practically all intellectuals were a-priorists.