David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

In section IV of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he is first presented with the task of differentiating between “relations of ideas” and “matters of facts”. He begins this section with first describing relations of ideas as things one knows not because of past experiences but by an indestructible bond between two ideas. After describing in great detail what he means by this Hume proceeds to the other form of human reason, matters of facts. He says that unlike relations of ideas, matters of facts rely on experiences. He goes to a great extent in order to differentiate these two forms of human reasoning by answering uprising questions and using examples as a form of proving his philosophy correct. Hume first attempts to define

A good example of this is my knowledge that they are building a house in china. This reasoning is caused not by actually being there and observing it but it is the cause of seeing a news letter to that effect. Hume states that cause and effect have to be learned by experiences. One, after experiencing a cause and then seeing its effect will then be able to understand cause and effect. One cannot know the effect of a cause with out the use of previous experiences because the cause is completely different than the effect. This is why out knowledge of cause and effect must be based on experience. Hume brings up the point that we make inferences on the future by using cause and effect, but he questions if the use of cause and effect is reliable enough to make these hypothesis about the

Hume states that in the process of human reasoning, there is a crucial step in which experience ties different thoughts and ideas together. Hume uses an example of someone being dropped on earth without any prior experience to anything. He says that this individual will have no sense of anything in life. He says that this individuals life will basically be hundreds of random events without any connection. Hume’s answer to this question is that human’s reasoning regarding experience comes from customs and not from the actual understanding. This is why in order to understand cause and effect, we have to experience a process occur numerous times before we can connect the cause to the effect. With out custom, human’s reasonings concerning matters of facts would solely be based on short term memory and present experiences. Custom helps us retain the idea of two events being related to each other, which helps to make sense of daily events that occur in our