A crucial assumption of the argument is semantic externalism, the thesis that the reference of our words and mental symbols is partially determined by contingent relations between thinkers and the world.
In other words, on an indirect realist approach, they are distinct existences: qualia or sense-data come to represent public objects and their sensible properties in virtue of some contingent relations holding between them (resemblance or causation).
How would these adjustments affect the reductio strategy of showing that presumptively contingent relations between physical states would be explained by necessary rational relations and vice-versa given (2) and (3)?
And, on the Humean view of causation as a contingent relation, the causal claim would be false.
Yalowitz's argument appears to be doing precisely this in holding that the existence of exceptions the mark of a ceteris paribus generalization entails a merely contingent relation between cases successfully covered (non-exceptions) by that generalization.
For example, the problem would dissolve immediately if the variables in (28) were taken to range over four-dimensional entities whose parts may extend in time as well as in space (Heller 1984, Lewis 1986b, Sider 2001), or if identity itself were construed as a contingent relation that may hold at some times or worlds but not at others (Gibbard 1975, Myro 1985, Gallois 1998).
However, even though it might be correct that fulfilling criteria for involuntary treatment or having a serious psychiatric disorder often corresponds to a lack of decision-making capacity, this is a contingent relation and not a conceptual one.
Although there has been considerable debate in regards to whether classical conditioning depends on a contingent relation between conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus, perceptual learning under a task that prevented high-level processing of the contingency structure is more closely aligned with classical conditioning, in which learning is more influenced by contiguity than contingency.
These "contingent" dominance relations, in general, make sophisticated strategies a Nash equilibrium.
They are subject to contingent power relations, to processes of agenda setting, etc. [17].
These mechanisms are defined by reference to the dimensions that obtain to each of the core constructs of the model outlined above The practical utility of the model depends on its adequate explanation of a set of complex, and contingent, social relations and processes at work in health care settings.
