more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 15101

[filed under theme 10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary ]

Full Idea

Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries.

Gist of Idea

Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity

Source

Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII)

Book Ref

Shoemaker,Sydney: 'Identity, Cause and Mind' [OUP 2003], p.425

A Reaction

The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke).

The 22 ideas with the same theme [knowing what must be, just through thought]:

2301 We know by thought that what is done cannot be undone [Descartes]
12553 Some of our ideas contain relations which we cannot conceive to be absent [Locke]
2112 Truths of reason are known by analysis, and are necessary; facts are contingent, and their opposites possible [Leibniz]
17079 Proofs of necessity come from the understanding, where they have their source [Leibniz]
19432 Intelligible truth is independent of any external things or experiences [Leibniz]
23461 Kant thought worldly necessities are revealed by what maths needs to make sense [Kant, by Morris,M]
14710 Necessity is always knowable a priori, and what is known a priori is always necessary [Kant, by Schroeter]
16256 For Kant metaphysics must be necessary, so a priori, so can't be justified by experience [Kant, by Maudlin]
5524 Maths must be a priori because it is necessary, and that cannot be derived from experience [Kant]
23495 The tautologies of logic show the logic of language and the world [Wittgenstein]
9169 A statement can be metaphysically necessary and epistemologically contingent [Putnam]
15101 Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker]
4728 Kripke separates necessary and a priori, proposing necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori examples [Kripke, by O'Grady]
16990 A priori = Necessary because we imagine all worlds, and we know without looking at actuality? [Kripke]
15228 Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden]
2526 Philosophers regularly confuse failures of imagination with insights into necessity [Dennett]
12428 Many necessities are inexpressible, and unknowable a priori [Kitcher]
20476 If the necessary is a priori, so is the contingent, because the same evidence is involved [Casullo]
13956 Kripke is often taken to be challenging a priori insights into necessity [Chalmers]
9598 Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson]
21621 We can't infer metaphysical necessities to be a priori knowable - or indeed knowable in any way [Williamson]
4719 Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady]