- Lived:
- c. 1299–1369 · Autrécourt (Lorraine), Paris, Avignon, Metz
- Tradition:
- Late medieval scholasticism — the radical edge of the nominalist "modern way"
- The Big Idea:
- From the existence of one thing, you can never prove the existence of another — so causes, substances, and other minds all lie beyond strict certainty, and life must run on probability instead.
- In their words:
- "From the fact that one thing is known to exist, it cannot be evidently inferred that another thing exists."
- If you remember one thing:
- Four hundred years before Hume, a Paris master showed that cause-and-effect cannot be proven with logical certainty — and the university's answer was to make him burn his own books.