Upfront I would like to apologize if this appears unrelated, but the more I think on this the more connection I see.
What this once again reminds me of is Shermer’s model of contingent-necessity, as was the case with the discussion about “nothingness”. It also has me thinking of such things as times arrow and Stephen J. Gould’s, Wonderful Life, and how would things be now if the tape was played over. Though, I am not advocating a mechanism of evolution here, hell no, just a thought on the matter.
I couldn’t find this precise phrasing online, and it is the one I am most satisfied with, so I have to type it out, pardon the error’s, they are most likely mine.
So, I’d like to throw in some quotes of Michael’s:
M. Shermer -
The issue of contingency and necessity remains one of the great issues of our time because it touches on such deep meaningful issues as free will and determinism, fate and destiny, and our place in the cosmos and in history.
....
Historians and philosophers have been cognizant for millennia of this basic tension between what may not be at all and what cannot be otherwise, between the particular and the universal, between history and nature, between contingency and necessity. But such synonyms can only take us so far (and may lead to problems of meaning and emphasis). Precise definitions are needed to formulate a model of change. Thus in this analysis contingency will be taken to mean a constraining juncture of events occurring without design, and necessity to mean constraining circumstances compelling a certain course of action. Contingencies are the sometimes small, apparently insignificant, and usually unexpected events in life - the kingdom hangs in the balance awaiting the horseshoe nail. Necessities are the large and powerful laws of nature and trends of history - once the kingdom has collapsed, the arrival of 100,000 horseshoe nails will not help a bit. Leaving either contingency or necessity out of the formula, however, is to ignore an important component in the development of historical sequences. The past is constructed by both components, and therefore it might be useful to combine the two into one term that expresses this interrelationship - contingent-necessity - taken to mean a conjuncture of events compelling a certain course of action by constraining prior conditions.
Well, I think you’re confusing the issue of whether a fact we state to be truth could possibly be false (as you say, epistemic possibility) with the question of whether a fact that is true now might possibly have been false if something else had happened in the past. The second, like the related issue of whether you could have chosen to do other than you did, is a tricky one. Intuitively, it seems like the notion of strict universal determinism is wrong and chance (meaning the occurrence of one or another of possible events) plays a big role in the wolrd. So anything could possibly have been something other than what it is if the past had worked out differently. But I can’t prove this intuition, and I’m a bit suspicious of it as a result. It may be that everything happens exactly as it must even if I can’t see the necessity, and that the only possibility that exists isepistemic rather than real. I really don’t know. I tend to live as if the intuitve nature of real possibility were true, but that all things are necessarily as they are might be the case.
can I ask you how do you determine that an actual world is the only one that can be actual? and why everything in it happens necessarily. thanks.
It’s not. If the actual world were the only possible world, then by definition everything in it would happen necessarily. But it isn’t, so it doesn’t.
I am aware that this discussion is somewhat esoteric. (It involves delving into the semantics of modal logic). There are a number of threads where we touch on these issues here.
Well, if the actual world is the only one that can be actual, then in fact there is only one possible world—the actual one—?
Doug,
can I ask you how do you determine that an actual world is the only one that can be actual? and why everything in it happens necessarily. thanks.
Hi Daisy,
Apparently apart from the this actual world in which you are sitting at your computer, there is another possible world where you are in the kitchen making tea, another possible world where computers have not been invented and you are knitting and another one where you are sky diving and so on. You, we are told, are smeared across all of these possible worlds.
When I think about this my head spins and it just seems crazy. This isn’t how the world normally appears to be to us, is it?
So I would ask for evidence of the existence of these other possible worlds, rather than for evidence of their non existence.
can I ask you how do you determine that an actual world is the only one that can be actual? and why everything in it happens necessarily. thanks.
It’s not. If the actual world were the only possible world, then by definition everything in it would happen necessarily. But it isn’t, so it doesn’t.
That is so true. Thank you so much again, ....seems like I am going to be doing lots thanking around here, I just hope no one minds.
I am aware that this discussion is somewhat esoteric. (It involves delving into the semantics of modal logic). There are a number of threads where we touch on these issues here.
I will take a look.
StephenLawrence - 26 February 2008 06:03 AM
Hi Daisy,
Apparently apart from the this actual world in which you are sitting at your computer, there is another possible world where you are in the kitchen making tea, another possible world where computers have not been invented and you are knitting and another one where you are sky diving and so on. You, we are told, are smeared across all of these possible worlds.
When I think about this my head spins and it just seems crazy. This isn’t how the world normally appears to be to us, is it?
So I would ask for evidence of the existence of these other possible worlds, rather than for evidence of their non existence.
Stephen
Good morning Stephen,
that was an honest question and not ‘smart’ one. Thank you for your observation.
I haven’t the time to read through the whole thread so if something is repeated I apologize.
Necessity as described by my handy Encarta Dictionary:
1. something essential: something that is esential, especially a basic requirement
- food, shelter, and the other necessities
...
4. PHILOSOPHY necessary quality: the quality of being necessary or of not being able to be otherwise
To me, as a guy who tries to see the world technically in a reductionist mind-set, necessity is quite simple. First what one must do is examine any given situation and figure out the variables involved in this situation. This of course can be next-near impossible in a system with a lot of variables and totally impossible in an open system. With this said, however, there are general probabilities that our minds can perhaps calculate for us about the world in order for us to survive. Perhaps when we learn something our brain automatically uses information we’ve learned to calculate outcomes subconsciously.
These outcomes our brains might be calculating are potentially the “necessity” of the situation. Of course this means that the calculation is only as good as the information used to do the calculation, so as a human unless we constantly update our information the outcomes will remain stagnant.
All in all necessity varies from person to person. For me I’ve made it a necessity to myself to become financially well-off within three years: so far have I engrained this in my mind that I’ve been barely getting sleep lately because to me I’ve actually convinced my subconscious mind enough that it is a necessity for me to keep hustling until I reach my goal.
Then you have people on the other end of the scale who see it as a necessity to sit around and veg-out watching reruns of whatever sitcom their hearts desire. Sometimes I envy these people. Wait...On second thought I’d rather hang myself in front of a crowd of hungry cannibals. And that is a wonderful thought in and of itself!
Back to the technical reasoning though…
Necessity to me summarized in one paragraph: All available outcomes possible in any given point in time. In other words one of these outcomes must unfold out of the potential probability available at that point in time and therefore this is the necessity. Why think any deeper? - There are problems in the world that need addressing in my opinion that are being delayed because of reflecting on such thoughts. On second thought though a small forum discussion like this could start a snow-ball effect that could address many of the problems in the world - so I really shouldn’t be so quick to judge. But that was a necessity!
I should also add that the point of any explanation is to give an account of why things are the way they are rather than being some other way.
If a window is broken and I ask “Why is it broken?”, I could get the answer “Because it must be” but that wouldn’t tell me what I want to know, despite the fact I would agree that it must be. What I want to know is what caused it to break. Here I think you would say there is no cause without other possible worlds but I don’t think that is true.
If a ball hit the window and broke it, I think it is still true that the ball caused the window to break despite the fact it had to hit it. I think there is still a cause and effect relationship between the ball hitting the window and it’s breaking.
When we consider what would have happened if the ball didn’t hit the window, I think this is our way of checking if the ball caused the window to break, rather than a fundamental part of the way the world works.
When philosophers claim we are moving to the nearest possible world when we do this, again I don’t think this is true. We are simply imagining the same set of cirumstances but removing the ball hitting the window from them. We take the universe and mentally jiggle it. I think our doing that is part of the universe but don’t see a reason to believe it is a property of the universe that it could have been in the jiggled state.
But then our “mental jiggling” is simply a lie, and more than a lie, what we are imagining is a necessary impossibility. There is no content to it. It would be just as correct to say that the window would have broken had the ball not hit it as it would be to say the window wouldn’t have broken if the ball had not hit it.
One simply cannot make sense of cause and effect in a necessitarian universe.
But then our “mental jiggling” is simply a lie, and more than a lie, what we are imagining is a necessary impossibility. There is no content to it. It would be just as correct to say that the window would have broken had the ball not hit it as it would be to say the window wouldn’t have broken if the ball had not hit it.
Simply because either option would be logically impossible.
One simply cannot make sense of cause and effect in a necessitarian universe.
That’s ambiguous. It is true in one sense and very probably false in another sense.
If you mean to say that cause and effect make no sense in a necessitarian universe that does not appear to follow (and I’d be interested in your proof if you disagree).
If you mean to say that a person living in a necessary world would not be able to make sense of cause and effect then you’re correct. One would not have the epistemic tools to distinguish causation from acausation (not that we can distinguish one from the other with certainty in our own world). Knowledge of the logical necessity of the existing world would indeed seem to render moot all what ifs.
But then our “mental jiggling” is simply a lie, and more than a lie, what we are imagining is a necessary impossibility.
I don’t think it’s a lie to take what is or was and alter it. I think it is a useful mental manipulation of the world. I play a game called Rush Hour with my daughter, in which we have to get a red car out of a car park. It’s path is blocked by other vehicles, their paths are also blocked by other vehicles and so on. We talk about what to do and mentally move the vehicles around. When we are doing this we don’t believe that the car park could be in a different physical state than the one it is in. We just do it because it helps us solve the puzzle.
I don’t think it’s a lie to take what is or was and alter it. I think it is a useful mental manipulation of the world. I play a game called Rush Hour with my daughter, in which we have to get a red car out of a car park. It’s path is blocked by other vehicles, their paths are also blocked by other vehicles and so on. We talk about what to do and mentally move the vehicles around. When we are doing this we don’t believe that the car park could be in a different physical state than the one it is in. We just do it because it helps us solve the puzzle.
Clearly on your point of view you can do mental jiggling. That’s not the issue. My point about it being a lie is that your mental jiggles can’t reveal anything that is true. That is, one would naturally say that you are figuring ways that you could get the car out of the park if it were different in certain determinate ways.
But on your picture, the car park couldn’t be different in any way, so there’s no sense to one’s purported ability to do anything with it if it were different. Indeed, it’s just as correct to imagine the opposite of what you imagined, since both of them would be equally true, that is to say, they would be equally false.
Take an example. Let’s say we throw a gutter-ball in bowling
One would normally say: (A) If I’d aimed more accurately down the center of the lane, I’d have hit the pins.
But on your point of view, it’s just as correct to say: (B) If I’d aimed more accurately down the center of the lane, I’d not have hit the pins.
Both are equally false on your point of view. That’s because there’s nothing that would make one truer than the other. Given that both have necessarily false antecedents, there is nothing on your system that would make one a truer conditional than the other.
If you want (B) to be false and (A) to be true, which is what we all believe, and what you would believe so long as you weren’t trying to do philosophy exercises, we would need some way to account for its truth. One cannot if this is the only possible world.
Take an example. Let’s say we throw a gutter-ball in bowling
One would normally say: (A) If I’d aimed more accurately down the center of the lane, I’d have hit the pins.
But on your point of view, it’s just as correct to say: (B) If I’d aimed more accurately down the center of the lane, I’d not have hit the pins.
I think that what we do is alter the cirumstances and then think about what would happen in the altered circumstances. We do this by applying what we consider to be known rules to the altered circumstances.
Take another example. Why do apples fall to the ground? Answer gravity. If there was no gravity they would float around but we don’t believe there is another possible world where apples exist without gravity.
.
