6215
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'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes]
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Full Idea:
For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent.
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From:
Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95)
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A reaction:
Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding.
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15251
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The attribution of necessity to causation is either primitive animism, or confusion with logical necessity [Ayer]
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Full Idea:
How are we to explain the word 'must' [about causation]? The answer is, I think, that it is either a relic of animism, or else reveals an inclination to treat causal connexion as if it were a form of logical necessity.
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From:
A.J. Ayer (The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge [1940], IV.18)
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A reaction:
The animism proposal just about makes sense (as a primitive feature of minds), but why would anyone, if they had the time and understanding, dream of treating a regular connection as a 'logical' necessity?
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