Necessary/Contingent

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Im Back!

I am about to finish the first semester of my sophmore year in college, and for some reason I just decided to post some thoughts… I guess I got bored… anyways:

Necessary vs Contingent… This distinction has been bothering me for a while now… I feel as if these terms are incredibly ambiguous but they have been used by alot of philosophers that ive been reading recently as if they are simple and easy concepts… Here are some examples of the uses: Natural laws are said to be contingent. Gravity for example may be a law of the universe as is, but its not logicly necessary. To imagine a universe without gravity would cause no logical contradiction. The laws of mathematics are often said to be necessary. It is inconcievable that 1+1 equals anything but 2… To say otherwise would be to make a logical contradiction.

In arguments against inductive reasoning, people have said that if you see only black crows over a certain period of time, it is not logical to conclude that all crows are black, for it is concievable, one could imagine, that the next crow you see is white. It is thus not a Necessary conclusion from repeated incidents of black crows that all crows are black. This is the case with all inductive inferences, but now consider deductive inferences. Given a certain premise, lets assume that we somehow know all crows are indeed black, and we are aware of a crow, than we cannot concieve of concluding anything else but that the crow is black. A simple deductive argument such as:

If A than B
A
Thus B

the conclusion is said to be logicly Necessary, and it is often said that the following:

If A than B
A
Thus not B

is simply inconcievable, or impossible to imagine.

The rules governing Deduction can thus be said to be neccessary, while induction apears to be contingent, and this is what I believe to be the backbone of the arguments against induction.

What I am trying to point out here is that the ideas of Necessary and Contingent seem to rely on the ability to concieve of an alternative possibility. If one can be imagined, than that thing is contingent, if one cannot imagine it being any other way, than this thing is necessary.

But these ideas lead people to make the following statements:

The universe could have been diffirent. It just happens to be this way…

And this is actually often used as an argument for god… Or at least the complexity of the universe. It is often said that if the speed of light was off by a little from what it actually is, or if some minute detail of the universe was diffirent than what it is, that life would not have come to exist. They say it as if the universe realy could have been that other way…

Is this realy apropriate though? I cannot see how one can actually conclude that the universe could have actually been diffirent… Such a statement seems completely non-sensical to me. What does one mean when they say: “The universe did not have to be this way…” What the hell does that even mean? It is ofcourse, by defenition, saying that the universe is contingent… But what does it mean to be contingent? As far as I can tell, all that one can possibly mean when they say that something is contingent, is that they can imagine it being another way. Does it follow from being able to imagine something that the something could actually have occured? I do not believe this is so… But some people apparently do… They say:

“Hell, I can imagine a world where there is no gravity, thus the world could actually have been that way”

This all is probably very confusing for all of you. I think what is happening here is a misunderstanding of language… I have not pin-pointed the ambiguity of these concepts though, I just keep running into these absurdities. I do have some ideas in the works though… I think talking of things as they could have been, or talking of possibility, is already working within the realm of imagination, and the confussion occurs because people make the mistake of believing that possibilities are a real feature of the world out there. This may simply be a case of too vivid an imagination, and the projection of the workings within ones mind onto reality…

I apoligize if this is completely absurd to you, I am struggeling with these concepts myself, but does anyone know what the hell im talking about, and does any one have any comments at all???

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Great to hear you’re back!

Then I’d like to see you get bored more often. It seems you produce good topics when you’re bored. :stuck_out_tongue:

Tank, you are right about what you feel about it: depending on which framework you have in mind, the terms “necessary” and “contingent” would have different application and slightly different meaning and implication. Anyway, I like your topic. And yes, there is a range of senses in which these terms could be understood.

The explanation you give, I think, is best understood under the possible worlds framework. The terms necessary, contingent, possible, and the impossible are what we call modalities employed when giving an account of things in the world and states of affairs actually existing and that could possibly exist. The “de re”, it seems, is what you’re interested in: the idea that things could exemplify or instantiate necessarily or contingently a characteristic or a property or a feature. Not an easy topic, I agree. What a thing is, essentially, is what makes it necessarily so if it exists in any possible world. If we define triangles as essentially three sided-figures, then whenever it exists in any world, it will be a three-sided figure.

In your example, the universe as we know it, with all its natural laws, what do you think makes it essentially or necessarily the universe? Gravity is a feature of our universe. Is it an essential feature? If we ascribe gravity as essential to the existence of “universe”, then since “universe” exists, then it must necessarily have gravity. But the key is what makes a thing essentially thus?

Anyway, this is just a start. I’d like to hear what you think of this.

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I agree with everything you said, RussianTank, all the way up to the portion of your post that I have “quoted” below:

This can be said to be an vallid form of evidence for the existence of God (and I might add, a good piece of evidence at that!), but it would be incorrect for anyone to say that such information deductively implies the existence of God. Such information can only imply the possibility of the existence of God.

Secondly, I think we often tend to let ourselves “restrict” God. We easily forget that God does not necessarily have to “play” along with the laws of physics and logic. For God to be God, He must, by His very nature be capable of everything imaginable AND un-imaginable, as well. Otherwise, He would not be God. So, if God is even going to even be included in this topic, we must be carefull to remember that He is not subjected to our laws of logic. :wink:

Personally, I can imagine a universe without gravity. The ancient cultures in past history did so just fine. The had no idea of the laws of physics or gravity. Instead, they either elected to take on a deeply-religious (and very much faith-based) explanation for the state of the universe, or they lived contentedly with absurd notions (i.e. The earth is help in place by giant spiders, and the earth is flat, so sailers risk sailing-off the earth’s surface if they voyage to far out to sea, etc.)

Am I understanding your point correctly? Please try to bear with me – you are a far deeper philosopher than I am! :slight_smile:

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the neccesary and contingient is really unneccesary distincts.

I propose it is not logically possible to view universe without gravity prior to space discoveries. in fact gravity is the same as mathematics. except gravity comes from experience while mathematics have become definitions in themselves.

can one imagine without gravity in the 1700? similarly there may be an instance where 1+1=3. though we can not imagine it now. it may be inconceivable for YOU to imagine, but do not place the restriction on others. please.

what is a white crow? you are playing the game with Color and Extension again.

what is logical is only logical in that it can be imagined.

stop dreaming about the possibilities. see my’what if’ post. what if I was god, if you were god. he’s god.

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Incidentally, Tank, Illativemindindeed had touched on this subject in the “Does order require design” thread. I think his reasoning follows actualism.

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They actually are simple and easy concepts: You’re making much more of this than it really requires. In language theory, for existence, “logically necessary” means it’s an entailment. For “Bob is on the couch” to be true, the existence of “Bob” and “couch” must both be true. If either “Bob exists” or “the couch exists” is not-true, then “Bob is on the couch” cannot be true. Logical necessity means a proposition must necessarily be true in order for a derivative statement to be true. The simplest form of lopical necessary statements are tautologies, in which the meaning of the subject is contained within the predicate: These are often used for definitions: A human is a featherless biped; A circle is divided into 360 degrees; the sum of the interior angles of a triangle in a Euclidian system is 180 degrees, and so forth.

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It seems simple, yes, but not when you attempt to deeply penetrate the question.
I mean, yas, the circle has 360 degrees, but to what extent is “the degree” a man-made division?
The difficulty with the implication of this question, which mathematicians take issue with is the fact that the entire system of mathematics seems to almost magically come together within a system of reliable interchangeability.
But to what extent is the system composed in such a way to accord with the overlying pattern?
The overlying pattern, then, the nature which lends itself to mathematical abstraction, even if we assume the relationship between the number 4 and the number 3 could have been reassigned if there were 13 divisions between the conception of the one and the ten, as opposed to the ten that there “are”, is still unchangeably the same then, right?
But, beyond that, or maybe even forgetting that, the idea of unity, the One, is indeed, where philosophy is concerned, not immune to challenge as a relative notion to the other values which imitate it. Two objects each imitate the one by repeating it “twice”, or by divinding it into “two”. But outside the material concern to count and make sense of our environment, is there a “necessary” value of mathematics (I isolate mathematics because it is the strictest form of logic, even “is it or isn’t it?” is an expression alternately represented by 1-1=0, which is arguably a mere possibility). Perhaps there is no hard-fast absolute which answers this question satisfactorily for everyone, but instead it is a matter of what one feels comfortable asserting or welcoming to the mind.
Is it “necessary” that we agree?

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Hmmm. This is a very good example of what I meant by making a simple thing confusing, because you are looking at two different aspects of a question as if they were the same thing. So long as a circle is defined as consisting of 360 degrees, then to say that 360 degrees constitutes a circle is a tautology and there is logical entailment. However, looked at as a historical process, rather than as an abstract totality, then the 3600-degreeness is, indeed, historically contingent. It could have been anything else – and then the whatever-else-it-was-defined as would be entailed.

And how very surprising could it be that mathematics is self-consistent, since it is created exploiting the self-consistency?

Your problem, so far as I can tell, is really with the constructedness of language, not with logic, per se.

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Bill-
You are right, I was going to ask–

does not logic, per se, depend heavily on the constructedness of language for verification/communication purposes?

–but it is evident, a priori, that the necessity beyond the linguisitcs of it, even the numerical language, is, as follows logically, necessary!

"Happy New Year,

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I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, because of the way you have put “verification/communication” together. In the sense that communication can only proceed because of the constructedness of language – i.e., because those marks we make or the sounds we make have no intrinsic meaning, but only the meanings that we agree upon through the linguistic process, yes, but it becomes a question as to what you mean by “depend on.” The same might be said of “verification.” Truth tables do verify the internal consistency of a series of propositions, but I’m not entirely certain that’s what you mean. And, in fact, at this level of inquiry, “meaning” itself becomes a rather undefined term.

I always get nervous when people use the expression a priori. In this case I’ve tried parsing this statement several ways and I can’t quite make out what you are saying. Could you try rephrasing – “unpacking” – the statement? Thanks. My main problems seem to be with the following parts of the expression:

“…linguistics of it…” “It” what? I can’t figure out what the pronoun is referencing here.

Putting together the subjects, verbs, and predicate nominatives of the two clauses, the core of the statement seems to be “. . . it is evident that . . . the necessity . . . is necessary,” a tautology which is “evident” because it’s circular. In this case I wonder what “beyond the linguistics of it” might mean," since this seems to me an entirely self-referencing statement that has nothing “beyond” its “linguistics,” i.e., it’s a purely formal statement.

And finally, “evident” is not a univocal term. I think it was Aquinas who pointed out that propositions can be “self-evident in themselves” (e.g., because of being tautologies), but not necessarily evident to the mind if it doesn’t know that the predicate is contained within the subject. If you were saying that “necessity is necessary” a priori meaning the same thing as Aquinas’ “self-evident in themselves,” then the statement seems to me unexceptionable, but possibly trivial.