David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume reasons that until we know the “necessary connection” or cause of things then all knowledge is uncertain, “merely a habit of thinking based upon repeated observation” (induction), and which depends on the future being like the past. Ultimately, he concludes that matters of fact can only be known through experience therefore matters of fact are only justified by recourse to experience, but any attempt to do this ends up being “circular”, “we have no good reason to believe almost everything we believe about the world, but that this is not such a bad thing. Nature helps us to get by where reason lets us down.”
Causation is based on cause and effect; from similar causes we get similar effects. Take an example as “When the radio is turned on, the speakers play sound or music.” We can say that these two statements are interconnected; pushing the button for the radio makes the sound or music come on. According to David Hume, when we say two types of

events such as event A causing effect B, we mean that A’s are “constantly conjoined” with B’s, event B must follow event A and not the other way around. There is a “necessary connection” between event A and event B such as when event A occurs, an effect B must follow.
The concept of causation is closely linked to the problem of induction.

According to Hume, “we reason inductively by linking conjoined events.” For Hume, knowledge consists of two types: Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Relations of Ideas are analytic statements, mathematical truths or necessary truths, “every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain”. These are truths we cannot change without having a contradiction. Matters of fact are “the second objects of human reason” and are strictly synthetic. They are all required through experience and our beliefs of the world; they rest simply on causation. These types of statements are more easily changed and can be edited or revised. As previously stated, Hume says that “there are no real beliefs for causation; it all depends on multiple experiences.” Therefore, matters of fact can only be acceptable by recourse to experience, but any attempt to do so is “circular” according to

Hume.
In his words, the backings of inductive methods are “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience”. The problem is how to support them and that leads to the problem that the belief can’t be proved deductively, because it is contingent. Only “necessary truths” can be proved deductively. It can’t be supported inductively because it’s claimed “that it has always or usually been reliable in the past; for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved.”
Hume thinks that there are “no real beliefs for causation;” he says it’s all based on “multiple experiences, habits, or customs.” Objects continue to behave as they were and things that appear the same will act the same. “Causation must be derived from experience,” says Hume. Experience therefore is telling us things we previously faced. Hume also says “the assumption that the future will resemble the past, or that things with similar appearances will produce similar effects,” meaning all our beliefs rest on this assumption. Another thing Hume points out are “habits, or customs,” which is the only thing that leads us to make that assumption. These are all Hume’s beliefs on what our causal inferences or relations rely on.
There is no rational explanation for a belief in miracles or even magic. While a “skepticism regarding necessary connection and the existence of an external world is justified”, it abolishes our ability to do or act. “Customs or habits” help us get by in the world today, as long as we restrict our thinking to relations of ideas and matters of fact. The mind, according to Hume, “is not a truth-tracking device,” and we abuse it when we think it can bring us to imaginary conclusions. “A “Humean” science of the mind can describe how the mind works and why it reaches the conclusions it does, but “it cannot take us beyond the confines of our own, natural, reason.””