Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 413 They are modes of mind, acts of perception, which catch the significance of things: meaning is the immaterial translation of material things. It is this translation of the material into cognitive terms which is what Duchesneau has mainly in mind by his talk of the rationality of the real. In the course of tracing this doctrine , in finding its roots in early drafts of Locke, its anticipations in other philosophers and in Locke's own attachment to Sydenham's symptomatic approach to diseases, Duchesneau has made important contributions to our understanding of Locke. JOHNW. YOLTON' York University, Toronto Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism. By D. C. Stove. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) Professor Stove has written a very lucid and profound analysis of Hume's inductive scepticism. He uses the theory of logical probability as a tool for understanding and refuting Hume's argument for inductive scepticism, the thesis which he states as the comparative equality: P(h,e.t)=P(h,t) if the argument from e to h is inductive. In the process, he argues that one important result of Hume's argument for inductive scepticism is that it entails "inductive fallibilism": P(h,evt)