In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume demonstrates how there is no rational way to make any claims about future occurrences. According to his way of thinking, knowledge of matters of fact comes from previous experience. From building on this rationale, Hume goes on to prove how, as humans, we can only make inferences (as opposed to statements) on what will happen in the future, based on our experiences of the past. Indeed 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 based on what we have known thus far.
Hume classifies 'knowledge' 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. On the other hand, "Matters of fact" - that is, the ideas that are directly caused by impressions - are not ascertained in the same manner as "Relations of Ideas." With "matters of fact," there is no certainty in establishing evidence of truth sin
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Thus, according to Hume, we are only accurate in saying that there is a fifty-percent chance that the sun will rise tomorrow. He believed that all ideas must derive from impressions, that the human mind itself invented nothing. As humans, we tend to use the principle of induction to predict what will occur in the future. Thus, even though the cause preceded the effect, there is no irrefutable proof that the cause is responsible for the effect's occurrence: it could be purely coincidental. Just because the sun has risen in the past does not serve as evidence for the future. Salmon points out that according to the principle of uniformity of nature, even though we do not know for sure what will happen in the future, we must assume that nature will continue as it has done in the past. Claiming that the sun will rise tomorrow is not, according to Hume, false; but nor is it true. (238) Ideas are memories of sensations, but impressions are the cause of the sensation. Hume illustrates that "the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality" (240). This statement does not necessitate that when I touch the hot stove (cause) I will always get burnt (effect). Hume grouped perceptions and experiences into one of two categories: impressions and ideas. From all of this, he concluded that a severe skepticism is the only defensible view of the world, though he does not expect us to live our daily lives by this notion. This is the human condition: we have no way of asserting what will happen in the future, only in what probably will. Hume believed that ideas were just dull imitations of impressions.
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