Hume's Future Patterns Essay

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Hume’s Future Patterns Hume coincides the uniformity of nature by using the matters of fact and relation of ideas to illustrate how one cannot project into the future patterns we have observed in the past. Hume believes that “all truths either express matters of fact or relation of ideas”.These facts and relations of ideas are the self-evident truths that are perceived by humans as common sense; ideas and facts that one would never question or doubt due to previous experiences from it. These ideas are perceived in our minds through the images and impressions that we are exposed to. We, as humans, practice these impressions and ideas so frequently that over time, they become unquestioned thoughts and actions of our everyday lives. Hume begins …show more content…

The term priori basically means that the ideas perceived by humans are only an impression within the minds or pure imagination and that it is not in any way involved with that of nature or the universe. The other term, posteriori, defines all matter of facts which cannot be known as a priori due to the fact that it is not a relation of ideas, but rather “known through the relation of cause and effect”. The other reasoning behind Hume’s statements is the question of whether or not the uniformity of nature expresses a matter of fact. He correlates these matter of facts by the notion of cause and effect. He states that in order for something to be perceived instantly, and even instinctively, is through cause and effect, thus providing humans a way to experiment and adapt to one's surroundings. Although cause and effect allows us to learn from the past and be able to project our experiences from it into the the future, one can never predict what nature will do next. Nature, being unpredictable, may change one day, therefore making the uniformity of nature irrational and unjustified to one’s manifest. I agree with Hume’s belief on not being able to predict the future patterns based on past observations. He is right in saying that nature is not uniform and irrational because one cannot predict what will happen tomorrow or what nature might do next. You can make a very

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