Using necessity or impossibility seriously covertly claims omniscience about all possibilities
Evidence
Certainty, necessity, impossibility; exhibited seriously in any other character than that of expressions of the degree of the persuasion entertained in relation to the subject in question, by him whose words they are, in the use of these words is virtually involved the assumption of omniscience. All things that are possible are within my knowledge, – this is not upon the list; such being interpreted is the phrase, this thing is impossible. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 615
Categorization
- DEFINE: Sharply defines certainty/necessity/impossibility as expressions of the speaker’s persuasion rather than properties of events.
- XREF: Connects to Hume’s critique of necessary connection and to later ordinary-language philosophy about modal terms (e.g. Kripke’s rigidity of designators), and to the reader’s analytical work on how language shapes perceived constraint. — connects to: The fictitious idea of necessity has caused real murder and persecution — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 613; The possible is understood either as subjective ignorance or as divine thought.; Necessity cannot be derived from possibility because possibility is epistemic, not ontological.