Quotation
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“All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact.”
David Hume · Empiricism · Enlightenment · 1748
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the fork as a sorting rule: a claim is either a relation of ideas, demonstrable by thought alone, or a matter of fact, whose opposite is still imaginable and which therefore depends on experience. A rival reading finds the fork too blunt for claims that seem to sit in neither camp, and that complaint starts a great deal of later philosophy. The sentence opens section 4, on causal reasoning. It prepares the problem of how matters of fact are known at all.
Did David Hume really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Hume's own English in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, part 1. Relations of ideas are necessary as mathematics is. The contrary of a matter of fact can always be conceived. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, part 1
Approximate date: 1748.
How to use it
A council paper in Brighton that says a new junction will reduce collisions is a matter of fact on this division, and a claim that two and three are five is not. Confidence does not move a sentence across the fork. Asking which side a paragraph is on will not design the junction; It will stop a definition being offered as if it were evidence about the road.
A mindset reading
The fork is a classification before it is a weapon. People use it to dismiss any sentence they dislike by saying it is neither mathematics nor experiment. Hume uses it to ask, of matters of fact, what experience actually rests on; If a claim is a relation of ideas, looking at the road is the wrong test; If it is a matter of fact, pure reasoning will not settle it.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is Hume's fork, relations of ideas versus matters of fact. Section 4 argues that factual reasoning depends on cause and effect, and that the causal link is not known by reason alone. The Enquiry is the later, cleaner statement of worries from the Treatise. The English is his, including the phrase to wit; The sentence is the sorting rule on which the rest of the section depends.
- knowledge
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the fork as a sorting rule: a claim is either a relation of ideas, demonstrable by thought alone, or a matter of fact, whose opposite is still imaginable and which therefore depends on experience. A rival reading finds the fork too blunt for claims that seem to sit in neither camp, and that complaint starts a great deal of later philosophy. The sentence opens section 4, on causal reasoning. It prepares the problem of how matters of fact are known at all.
Did David Hume really say this?
Well attested. Hume's own English in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, part 1. Relations of ideas are necessary as mathematics is. The contrary of a matter of fact can always be conceived. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, part 1 Approximate date: 1748.