Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

In An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume demonstrates how there is no way to rationally make any claims about future occurrences. According to Hume knowledge of matters of fact come from previous experience. From building on this rationale, Hume goes on to prove how, as humans we can only make inferences on what will happen in the future, based on our experiences of the past. But he points out that we are incorrect to believe that we are justified in using our experience of the past as a means of evidence of what will happen in the future. Since we have only experience of the past, we can only offer propositions of the future. Hume classifies human into two categories; “Relations of Ideas,” and “Matters of Fact.” (240) “Relations of ideas” are either intuitively or demonstratively certain, such as in Mathematics (240). It can be affirmed that 2 + 2 equals 4, according to Hume’s “relations of ideas.” “Matters of fact” on the other hand are not ascertained in the same manner as “Relations of Ideas.” The ideas that are directly caused by impressions are called matters of fact. With “matters of fact,” there is no certainty in establishing evidence of truth since every contradiction is poss