Hume's Enquiry Section IV

In this reading Hume deals with the two classifications of knowledge and the origins of cause and effect. He says that all knowledge falls into either of two categories; those categories being 'Relationship of Ideas' and 'Matters of Fact'. Relationship of ideas refers to all the things that are certain and saying that they are false suggests a contradiction. Matters of fact refer to all other things where the premise 'the sun will rise tomorrow' is no more true than the premise 'the sun will not rise tomorrow'. Hume says that all matters of fact are directly related to the ideas of cause and effect and takes a very thorough route to proving that cause and effect cannot possibly be a priori knowledge. Then Hume goes into the differences between moral reasoning and demonstrative reasoning and concludes that neither of them help keep us certain that the future will resemble the past.

So far Hume's making a lot of sense. There were only a couple places that I got confused; he's not really clear on exactly what 'Matters of fact' really are and I reread that paragraph probably five times trying to make sure I didn' miss it. Thanks to Sparknotes though I've learned that he's referring to experience. I found it odd though that Matters of Fact are not necessarily true, whereas Relationships of Ideas are necessarily true. Judging by the names that Hume gives to these, I'd have instinctively put them the other way around. The other time I got confused was when Hume goes into moral reasoning and demonstrative reasoning, it's kind of unclear about the nature of each and the only thing that I really came away with a clear understanding of is that neither really do a lot to help prove that the future we're projecting in out mind is going to resemble the past we're basing out experience on.