A contiguous cause directly acts to produce an effect, as, for example, the movement of a hammer is the direct cause of driving in of a nail. -philosophy-listentothis-gadgets - ... site:example.com find submissions from "example.com" url:text search for "text" in url selftext:text search for "text" in self post contents self:yes (or self:no) include (or exclude) self posts nsfw:yes (or nsfw:no) include (or exclude) results marked as NSFW. These are facts one can legitimately say could have been otherwise. The alteration of any facts outside of those that result from human choices (the metaphysically given) would result in a contradiction somewhere in reality, even if it is not immediately apparent to one’s imagination. Because particular human choices could have been different without contradicting human nature, we can legitimately say that the facts produced by human choices (insofar as they are thus produced) So Objectivism holds that the necessary/contingent distinction matches the metaphysically-given/man-made distinction. D.M. )Thus, Objectivism distinguishes between two types of facts: those that proceed from human choice, and those that do not. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. These metaphysically-given facts include many facts that most philosophers would call “empirical” or “synthetic.” These facts could not have been otherwise than they are. "Contingency and Probability." A contingent proposition is a proposition that is not necessarily true or necessarily false (i.e., is not the negation of a necessary truth). Central States Speech Journal 18 (1967), p. 9.Bitzer, Lloyd F. "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge." )Because the facts of the physical interactions of things in the universe–outside of human control–follow inexorably from the natures of the entities involved, and because any imagined alternative to these interactions, as they really happened, would imply that something, in some way, was To clarify further how such alternatives involve a contradiction: In order for any fact to have been different, something in the history of the universe would have had to have acted differently. Given the meanings of “one” and “two,” we can immediately see that the addition of two “ones” (units) always does yield “two,” yet the statement “One plus one does not equal two,” contradicts this.
It’s incomprehensible that one plus one should ever add to anything but two. Is 2+2 = 4 a necessary truth? The "impossible" is that which will never be done; therefore, it will not be deliberated over. This could be held to be God, society, the self, or the group speaking a given language. During the normal operation of consciousness, human beings, by their nature, must each choose to focus their minds on the process of thinking, or release their focus and let their consciousness drift.

Synonym Discussion of contingent. Future contingents are contingent statements about the future — such as future events, actions, states etc.