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First off, here's what was for me a modern-day – and probably wrong-headed – way in to his Inquiry:

We want an account of how we successfully perceive and interact with the world in which any questions which would be ultimately unanswerable anyway could be acknowledged up front and integrated in some sense into the overall theoretical structure, rather than as culmination or paradoxical breaking-down of philosophising.

1 Right way, wrong turn: Here then are some regulative "controls" (or "just limits") Reid seems to want on the sort of accounts (scientific or strictly philosophical) we produce concerning human understanding of the world:

1) (important) Careful observation of, and "clear and distinct" reflection on, experimental input gathered from our experience. This allows us to more rigorously and accurately form general laws ("just deduction").

2) (all-important) Awareness that any philosophical linchpin has "no root but in" and "grows out of" (13) Common Sense.......

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Approximate Pages: 8 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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