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Single Idea 4766
[filed under theme 10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
]
Full Idea
Necessity …is nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry our thoughts from one object to another.
Gist of Idea
Necessity only exists in the mind, and not in objects
Source
David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.III.16)
Book Ref
Hume,David: 'A Treatise of Human Nature', ed/tr. Selby-Bigge/Nidditch [OUP 1978], p.165
A Reaction
The classic statement of the empiricist position. Personally I don't believe it. Non-mental necessities are likely to be natural, or to be features of 'Platonic' objects. A big issue…
The
20 ideas
with the same theme
[there is nothing necessary about the real world]:
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4766
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Necessity only exists in the mind, and not in objects
[Hume]
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7186
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There are no necessary truths, but something must be held to be true
[Nietzsche]
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4528
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For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions
[Nietzsche]
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9362
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Necessary truths are those we will maintain no matter what
[Lewis,CI]
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8483
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Necessity is relative to context; it is what is assumed in an inquiry
[Quine]
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10924
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Necessity is in the way in which we say things, and not things themselves
[Quine]
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8206
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Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia
[Quine]
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4577
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There is no necessity higher than natural necessity, and that is just regularity
[Quine]
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9201
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Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described
[Quine, by Fine,K]
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10927
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Necessity only applies to objects if they are distinctively specified
[Quine]
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15090
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Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths
[Quine, by Shoemaker]
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4718
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If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity
[Putnam, by O'Grady]
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14919
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Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality
[Fraassen]
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19284
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Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false
[Blackburn]
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20475
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Maybe modal sentences cannot be true or false
[Casullo]
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11119
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De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences
[Jubien]
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3888
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Hume assumes that necessity can only be de dicto, not de re
[Scruton]
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9200
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Empiricists suspect modal notions: either it happens or it doesn't; it is just regularities.
[Fine,K]
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14589
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A modal can reverse meaning if the context is seen differently, so maybe context is all?
[Hawthorne]
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14598
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Abstracta imply non-logical brute necessities, so only nominalists can deny such things
[Dorr]
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