Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Contextualism Contested (and reply)' and 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation'

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2 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
Chrysippus said the uncaused is non-existent [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus said that the uncaused is altogether non-existent.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c
     A reaction: The difficulty is to see what empirical basis there can be for such a claim, or what argument of any kind other than an intuition. Induction is the obvious answer, but Hume teaches us scepticism about any claim that 'there can be no exceptions'.
2. Reason / E. Argument / 7. Thought Experiments
We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle]
     Full Idea: Judgments of necessity seem always to be based on thought experiments and appeals to what we can imagine.
     From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1)
     A reaction: That is, the denial of this thing seems inconceivable. I would say that they are also based on coherence. The idea that we can think without imagination is nonsense.