display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
| 12653 | There's statistical, logical, nomological, conceptual and metaphysical possibility [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Statistically, logically, nomologically, conceptually, and metaphysically possible. That's all the kinds of possibility there are this week, but feel free to add others. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.3) | |
| A reaction: There's also epistemic possibility (possibility 'for all I know'), but I suppose that isn't the real thing. How about 'imaginative possibility' (possibility 'as far as I can imagine')? |
| 6215 | 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95) | |
| A reaction: Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding. |
| 16582 | We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Even if we can feign in our mind that a point swells to a huge bulk and then contracts to a point - imagining something's made from nothing (ex nihilo), and nothing's made from something - still we cannot comprehend how this could be done in nature. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.20) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Pasnau notes that this offers two sorts of conceivability, of something happening, and of a reason for it happening. A really nice idea, significant (I think) for scientific essentialists, who say possibilities are fewer than you think. |