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NECESSITY (Lat. necessitas)

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Originally appearing in Volume V19, Page 335 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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NECESSITY (See also:Lat. See also:necessitas) , a See also:term used technically in See also:philosophy for the quality of inevitable happening; for example, hot See also:air necessarily tends to rise. Thus it corresponds in the See also:sphere of See also:action to certainty in the sphere of knowledge. That the See also:sun will rise to-morrow is a necessary event; and men anticipate the rising with certainty. In See also:ordinary See also:language the conception of necessity is rendered meaningless by being referred to the See also:present or even to the past. A current See also:definition of necessity is " the See also:state which cannot be otherwise than it is." Such a definition tells us nothing. How can any state be otherwise than it is? Necessity can have meaning only in reference to the future: it means See also:absence of spontaneous See also:power in that which acts necessarily. For the origin of the conception we must look to our inward See also:personal experience of constraint. When we are acting under See also:physical or mathematical or logical or moral necessity we are so far precluded from spontaneous action—in See also:common phrase, we can do no otherwise—though the causes of constraint may be of very different 'winds. In See also:ethics the term necessitarianism is applied to that view of human action which regards all action as dictated by See also:external causes (cf. See also:DETERMINISM). The sense in which, if at all, the human mind can cognize necessity, i.e. causal connexion between events or states, has been the subject of vigorous discussion among philosophers.

By sceptics and empiricists it is held that a See also:

law is merely a crystallized See also:summary of observed phenomena. Thus J. S. See also:Mill denies that a See also:general proposition is more than an enumeration of particulars, and hence that syllogistic reasoning cannot amplify knowledge (see See also:SYLLOGISM). It is clear that the senses cannot apprehend causal connexion, and this impossibility gives rise to a See also:prior conception according to which the conception of necessity is purely intellectual (see See also:METAPHYSICS).

End of Article: NECESSITY (Lat. necessitas)

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