Summary:

Hume opens this section by drawing a distinction between "relations of ideas"

and "matters of fact." Relations of ideas are a priori and indestructible bonds
created between ideas. All logically true statements such as "5 + 7 = 12" and
"all bachelors are unmarried" are relations of ideas. Relations of ideas are
intuitively or demonstrably certain, and a denial of such a proposition implies a
contradiction.

Whereas, Matters of fact deal with experience: that the sun is shining, that
yesterday I went for a walk, or that it will rain tomorrow are all matters of fact.
They are learned a posteriori, and can be denied without fear of contradiction.

Now here when Hume says that it would be a contradiction to deny relations
of ideas, but not matters of fact. By this he means that surely, there is
something contradictory about saying "it's raining" when the sun is shining
brightly. The point is that we need to refer to the world around us to verify
matters of fact. The claim that two plus two equals five is a contradiction
because nothing in our experience can possibly prove it true. The claim "it's
raining" might have been true under other circumstances, and the claim must
be compared with reality in order to be proven false.

We can know relations of ideas quite easily by means of what Hume calls
demonstrative reasoning. There are well-established axioms and rules of
inference according to which I can derive mathematical and other logical
truths. Similarly, I may know many matters of fact from sensory experience or
from memory, like neither of these are source of my knowledge, that my friend
is in France or that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Hume suggests that we know matters of fact about unobserved things through
a process of 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.

Now further he 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 will move without contradiction.
Cause and effect are themselves totally distinct: nothing in the movement of
the first billiard ball can a priori suggest to me the movement of 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 we infer
as yet unobserved phenomena in the future. The question, then, is how we
can ground general principles that we learn from experience. This takes us to
Hume’s “problem of induction.”

 All our general principles in philosophy and science are induced from
particular examples. Induction essentially consists in observing and predicting
the future based on what we have observed in the past. We are absolutely
certain that the second billiard ball will move when it is struck, not through
demonstrative reasoning, but because we have seen bodies collide in that
way countless times during our lives and have never seen one instance to the
contrary.

For induction to be a valid form of reasoning, we need to propose some sort of

"uniformity principle" that establishes that the future will resemble the past.

But, he finds there is no good reason to trust in any sort of uniformity principle.
It cannot be established through reason alone, since its denial is hardly
contradictory. It would seem that we learn of this principle through experience,
but we cannot claim that it is confirmed in experience. A uniformity principle is
needed to justify all inductive claims based on past experience, so we cannot
prove the uniformity principle itself through induction.

We need to prove the uniformity principle before we can say anything about
induction or knowledge from experience, but it seems that we cannot prove
the uniformity principle without an appeal to experience. This circularity could
be explained or demonstrated as follows:

Cause and effect

Knowledge from experience induction

Uniformity principle
1. Our knowledge from experience is based on the principle of cause and effect
2. The principle of cause and effect is grounded in induction
3. Induction relies on the uniformity principle, that the future will resemble the
past
4. We come to know the uniformity principle from experience

If we ask how we ground our knowledge from experience (and hence the
uniformity principle) we return to (1) and our reasoning has come full circle.

Hume suggests that we infer similarities between past and future but that
there is no form of reasoning that can confirm these inferences. He confesses
that he may simply have failed to identify an argument that could give a
rational foundation for causal reasoning, there is no way we can prove any
kind of uniformity principle, and so induction is not a valid form of reasoning.
Any reasoning about future events is mere conjecture and the claim that the
sun will rise tomorrow is no more certain than the claim that aliens will invade
the earth tomorrow. Hume is not necessarily claiming that there is no
uniformity principle or that there is a good chance that the sun will not rise
tomorrow. He is saying that if there is some hidden power that enforces a
continued regularity in physical laws, it is beyond the power of our reason to
detect it. Our belief in induction is not based in reason but simply in custom.

For example, Even a child knows from past experience that a flame will burn.
If this knowledge comes from some form of reasoning, it must be a form of
reasoning so obvious that even a child can grasp it. He suggests that the child
learns, not through reasoning, but through the conditioning of custom.

Past experience has led us to believe certain things about future events
(and indeed, this experience rarely leads us astray) but these beliefs are not
rationally justified. Hume's argument is that we are committed to the belief that
the future will resemble the past, but that we are not rationally justified in
holding this belief. Reason is a far weaker tool than we might have supposed.