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Full Idea
To say that we dignify a truth as necessary we are expressing our own mental attitudes - our own inability to make anything of a possible way of thinking which denies it. It is this blank unimaginability which we voice when we use the modal vocabulary.
Gist of Idea
Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false
Source
Simon Blackburn (Spreading the Word [1984], 6.5)
Book Ref
Blackburn,Simon: 'Spreading the Word' [OUP 1984], p.217
A Reaction
Yes, but why are we unable to imagine it? I accept that the truth or falsity of Goldbach's Conjecture may well be necessary, but I have no imagination one way or the other about it. Philosophers like Blackburn are very alien to me!
| 14629 | If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn] |
| 14529 | If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A] |
| 2864 | The main objection to intuitionism in ethics is that intuition is a disguise for prejudice or emotion [Blackburn] |
| 2865 | Critics of prescriptivism observe that it is consistent to accept an ethical verdict but refuse to be bound by it [Blackburn] |
| 2866 | A true belief might be based on a generally reliable process that failed on this occasion [Blackburn] |
| 6451 | Visual sense data are an inner picture show which represents the world [Blackburn] |
| 11911 | Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn] |
| 23223 | The word 'respect' ranges from mere non-interference to the highest levels of reverence [Blackburn] |
| 23996 | Akrasia is intelligible in hindsight, when we revisit our previous emotions [Blackburn] |
| 19284 | Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn] |