David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume reasons that until we know the “necessary connection” or cause of things then all knowledge is uncertain, “merely a habit of thinking based upon repeated observation” (induction), and which depends on the future being like the past. Ultimately, he concludes that matters of fact can only be known through experience therefore matters of fact are only justified by recourse to experience, but any attempt to do this ends up being “circular”, “we have no good reason to believe almost everything we believe about the world, but that this is not such a bad thing. Nature helps us to get by where reason lets us down.” Causation is based on cause and effect; from similar causes we get similar effects. Take an example as “When the radio is turned on, the speakers play sound or music.” We can say that these two statements are interconnected; pushing the button for the radio makes the sound or music come on. According to David Hume, when we say two types of

According to Hume, “we reason inductively by linking conjoined events.” For Hume, knowledge consists of two types: Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Relations of Ideas are analytic statements, mathematical truths or necessary truths, “every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain”. These are truths we cannot change without having a contradiction. Matters of fact are “the second objects of human reason” and are strictly synthetic. They are all required through experience and our beliefs of the world; they rest simply on causation. These types of statements are more easily changed and can be edited or revised. As previously stated, Hume says that “there are no real beliefs for causation; it all depends on multiple experiences.” Therefore, matters of fact can only be acceptable by recourse to experience, but any attempt to do so is “circular” according to