display all the ideas for this combination of texts
12 ideas
| 17183 | Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is said to be impossible either because the essence of the thing itself or its definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause exists determinate to the production of such a thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Is the contradiction in nature or in logic? How can he be sure that there doesn't exist some causeless thing? |
| 4299 | Contingency is an illusion, resulting from our inadequate understanding [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The common notion of 'contingency' is for Spinoza an illusion, which derives from the fact that our view of reality is often inadequate and incomplete. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.8 | |
| A reaction: The crux is if there could another universe with different natural laws. Spinoza is in no position to deny the possibility. Cosmologists assume it is possible, and run computer simulations to test it. There is 'metaphysical' and 'natural' necessity. |
| 4824 | We only call things 'contingent' in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: A very good remark. Growing up is largely a realisation of the necessity of human affairs that you thought could be otherwise. (Forgive the pessimism!) As metaphysics, I find this appealing, too. |
| 4839 | Reason naturally regards things as necessary, and only imagination considers them contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary; ..hence, it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or to the past, as contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting claim, which seems to be central to rationalism. The empiricist response must be that imagination (which is founded on experience) is a better guide to metaphysical status than pure reason can ever be. |
| 14361 | Lewis says indicative conditionals are truth-functional [Lewis, by Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Stalnaker, Lewis holds that indicative conditionals have the truth conditions of material conditionals. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Counterfactuals [1973]) by Frank Jackson - Conditionals 'Further' | |
| A reaction: Thus Lewis only uses the possible worlds account for subjunctive conditionals, where Stalnaker uses it for both. Lewis is defending the truth-functional account for the indicative conditionals. |
| 8434 | In good counterfactuals the consequent holds in world like ours except that the antecedent is true [Lewis, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: According to Lewis, a counterfactual holds when the consequent is true in possible worlds very like our own except for the fact that the antecedent is true. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Counterfactuals [1973]) by Paul Horwich - Lewis's Programme p.213 | |
| A reaction: Presumably the world being very like our own would make it unlikely that there would be anything else to cause the consequent, apart from the counterfactual antecedent. |
| 4822 | Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the response of the empiricist: how does he know that? Hume says he can't know it, and Leibniz says he knows it a priori. Traditionally, 'necessary' is the dubious term, but maybe it is 'contingent' which is meaningless. |
| 17182 | Necessity is in reference to essence or to cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is called necessary either in reference to its essence or its cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: I like any proposal that necessity should be 'in reference to' something, rather than being free-standing. I like to add necessary 'for' something, which is often conceptual necessity. Roots are necessary for trees. |
| 4818 | People who are ignorant of true causes imagine anything can change into anything else [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who are ignorant of true causes make complete confusion - thinking that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as seed, and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself can be guilty of this, but it strikes me as a key idea. Humean scepticism about causation seems to me the product of eighteenth century ignorance about the mechanisms of cause and effect which have since been uncovered by science. |
| 20310 | Error does not result from imagining, but from lacking the evidence of impossibility [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea which excludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17 s) | |
| A reaction: These may be the wisest words I have yet found on conceivability and possibility. My example is imagining a bonfire on the moon, which seems possible until you fully grasp what fire is. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |