The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 05 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
me for the credit of my cause to name some reason, “how the caster was
necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force to the
cast, and neither more nor less; or what necessity there was why the
caster must throw into that table rather than the other, or that the
dice must fall just upon that part of the table, before the cast was
thrown”. Here again, from our ignorance of the particular causes that
concurring make the necessity he inferreth, that there was no such
necessity at all; which indeed is that which hath in all this question
deceived him, and all other men that attribute events to fortune. But I
suppose he will not deny that event to be necessary, where all the
causes of the cast, and their concurrence, and the cause of that
concurrence are foreknown, and might be told him, though I cannot tell
him. Seeing therefore God foreknows them all, the cast was necessary;
and that from antecedent causes from eternity; which is no hypothetical
necessity.
And whereas to my argument to prove, that ‘raining to-morrow if it shall
then rain, and not raining to-morrow if it shall then not rain’, was
therefore necessary, because ‘otherwise this disjunctive proposition, it
shall rain or not rain to-morrow, is not necessary’, he answereth that
“a conjunct proposition may have both parts false, and yet the
proposition be true; as, if the sun shine it is day, is a true
proposition at midnight”: what has a conjunct proposition to do with
this in question, which is disjunctive? Or what be the parts of this
proposition, _if the sun shine, it is day_? It is not made of two
propositions, as a disjunctive is; but is one simple proposition,
namely, this, _the shining of the sun is day_. Either he has no logic at
all, or thinks they have no reason at all that are his readers. But he
has a trick, he saith, to abate the edge of the disjunction, by varying
ther proposition thus, “I know that _it will rain to-morrow_, or _that
it will not rain to-morrow_, is a true proposition”; and yet saith he,
“it is neither true that I know it will rain to-morrow, neither is it
true that I know it will not rain to-morrow”. What childish deceit, or
childish ignorance is this; when he is to prove that neither of the
members is determinately true in a disjunctive proposition, to bring for
instance a proposition not disjunctive? It had been disjunctive if it
had gone thus, _I know that it will rain to-morrow, or I know that it
will not rain to-morrow_; but then he had certainly known determinately
one of the two.