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|Historical Context=Hume is one of the most notable skeptics in all of history thanks to his skepticism of causation, and necessary connection. Within a historical context, philosophers of the time were concerned with proving axiomatic schemes, heavily relying on causation. Diverging from this reliance on causation, Hume would go to show irrationality within such a connection. More specifically, within scientific change, Hume’s arguments are most notably used against infallibilism. Famously, Hume is often associated with the terms '''The Problem of Induction''' and '''Hume’s Fork'''. Hume creates most of his arguments for skepticism within his two texts ''A Treatise of Human Nature (1738)'' and ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748)''.[[CiteRef::Morris (2001)]]
At the time, modern philosophers had strived away from Aristotle’s account of causation. In this rejection, they thought themselves revolutionary. Aristotle’s account of causation consisted of material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The philosophers of the middle ages, only retained some semblance of efficient causes in their deferralsuch as Locke. They Philosophers like Locke instead chose to categorize causes as primary or secondary efficient causes. Primary causes were the source of being of a particular thing, while secondary causes were the beginnings of motion or change. Albeit digressing from Aristotle’s model of causation, those same philosophers kept Aristotle’s distinction between scientific knowledge and belief. This distinction helped to hold propositions which were scientific vs. those which were not. Scientific knowledge consisted of propositions which could be demonstrated, i.e. they could prove to have a necessary connection between cause and effect independent of experience. Beliefs were just statements of opinion based on experience. Descartes and Malebranche, for instance, kept this distinction in that they were certain of demonstrative scientific knowledge. Locke, on the other hand, was more interested in asserting natural philosophy by appealing to the rationality of belief.[[CiteRef::Morris (2001)]][[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]]
Hume took a different approach. He divided that same distinction between scientific explanation and belief into relations of ideas and matters of fact. The distinction was still based on Aristotle's knowledge and belief, but it translated slightly differently. Similar to Aristotle’s distinction, Hume’s distinction agreed that all propositions could be exclusively divided into one category or the other. Different to Aristotle’s distinction however, it provided a different account for the two types of propositions. This distinction is commonly referred to as Hume’s Fork.[[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]]