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Hume: Matters Of Fact And Rela - College Essay

Hume: Matters Of Fact And Rela

tion of idea's
In David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he attempts, by way of empiricism, to uncover the basis for knowledge and reasoning. Hume deals with the principle of induction, and his views on synthetic and analytic truths. Take his favourite example: his belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. Clearly, this is a matter of fact; it rests on our conviction that each sunrise is an effect caused by the rotation of the earth. But our belief in that causal relation is based on past observations, and our confidence that it will continue tomorrow cannot be justified by reference to the past. So we have no rational basis for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow. ...

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the explanation in his Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding by defining the only two types of knowledge. Relations of ideas and matters of fact. His definition of relations of ideas is that they are the knowledge which is "either intuitively or demonstratively certain"(132). They are universal truths that include mathematics and geometry, and do not actually exist in the world except in the form of ideas (132). Matters of fact, on the other hand, require investigation in the real world, and are completely uncertain because the contrary of every matter of fact is equally possible and conceivable (132). Hume sets out to discover that which makes us believe any matters of fact that exist beyond what we have observed with our senses in the past or are witnessing in the present. This exploration serves to clarify the distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas and indicates their important implications.
Hume comes up with the relation of cause ...

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Hume: Matters Of Fact And Rela. (2007, January 12). Retrieved April 25, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Hume-Matters-Of-Fact-And-Rela/58566

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 1/12/2007 03:07:37 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1098
Pages: 4

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