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From: unbent@ecsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: certainly won't vs certainly can't -- quite comprehensible
Message-ID: <3430@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Nov-84 09:00:31 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.3430
Posted: Fri Nov  2 09:00:31 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Nov-84 22:24:30 EST
Lines: 23

Re: flairvax.803, wherein Baba writes:

>The question then becomes: What is the difference between an event that
>certainly *will* not happen and an event that certainly *can* not happen?

	Depends on how you're taking "certainly", doesn't it?  If you're
confusing it with "necessarily" -- something that people who run
predictability and determinism together tend to do -- then there isn't any
difference [unless you subscribe to a modal logic weaker than S4 -- but
let's ignore the subtleties of iterated modalities for now. ;-) ].  If,
however, you respect the difference between *epistemic* notions
(predictable, certain) and *ontological* notions (determined, necessary),
then the difference will be clear.  There are lots of contingent truths
about which I'm certain and plenty of necessary truths (e.g., mathematical
truths) which I may believe, but about which I'm quite uncertain.  [I gather
that even mathematicians are divided on the question of whether the truth of
the four-color theorem is now known with certainty.]


Yours for clearer concepts,       --Jay Rosenberg
				    Dept. of Philosophy
...mcnc!ecsvax!unbent		    Univ. of North Carolina
				    Chapel Hill, NC  27514