Truth

When we talk about necessary truths, do we say that they are as such simply because we cannot imagine how things could be otherwise? (Does 2+2 = 4 simply because I cannot imagine that 2+2 could be equal 5 or 6?)

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I would not say that necessity is defined by our powers of imagination. Maybe some people are better at imagining things that others, but necessity doesn't vary. Like many philosophers these days, I find it helpful to think about necessity instead in terms of 'possible worlds', in terms of different ways the world might be. To say that a statement is necessarily true on this way of thinking about these things is to say that it holds in all possible worlds. Those worlds are not defined by imagination, so neither is necessity.

This is not to say that imagination isn't important here, because we use our powers of imagination in order to try to work out whether a statement is or isn't necessary. For example, I may convince myself that something is not necessary because I can imagine it being false. But on this view imagination is a fallible guide to necessity, not the definition of necessity. I might just that something is necessary because I can't imagine it being false, but in fact that's only because I'm not clever enough at thinking of possibilities. And I might think that something is not necessary because I think that I can imagine it being false, but in fact I am fooling myself. On this view, imagination is part of the epistemology of necessity, not part of its nature.

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