Hume Cause And Effect

Thereupon, Hume made the suggestion that we as humans have the ability to possess knowledge of the “matters of fact” concerning objects that we have never seen or experienced before through a process which we have known as “cause and effect”. My knowledge that my friend is in France might have been caused by a letter to that effect, and my knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow is inferred from past experience, which tells me that the sun has risen every day in the past.Hume then asks how we know the principle of cause and effect: if I see one billiard ball rolling toward another, how do I know that the second ball will move when it is struck? He suggests that this knowledge cannot be a priori, since I can deny that the second billiard ball
Hume thus concludes that our knowledge of cause and effect must be based on experience. From observed phenomena in the past one can infer as yet unobserved phenomena in the future.We base our knowledge of future events in past experience, but how do we know that the past is a good guide for future predictions? Hume distinguishes between "demonstrative reasoning," which is based on relations of ideas, and "moral reasoning," which is based on matters of fact. We cannot know that the future will resemble the past by means of demonstrative reasoning, since there is no contradiction in suggesting that the future will not resemble the past. Moral reasoning is also unhelpful, since it falls into a vicious circle. If all our predictions about the future are based on this principle--that the future will resemble the past--and that principle is derived from past experience, we cannot know that it will remain true in the future except by assuming that principle from the outset. Hume suggests that we infer similarities between past and future but that there is no form of reasoning that can confirm these