Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Jonathan Dancy, Crawford L. Elder and John Hawthorne

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6 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / a. Agrippa's trilemma
Foundations are justified by non-beliefs, or circularly, or they need no justification [Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: Foundationalism can get rid of the regress argument with one of three types of belief: those justified by something other than beliefs, those which justify themselves, or those which need no justification.
     From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3)
     A reaction: A nice clear trilemma, and none of them will do, which is why foundationalism is false. I vote for Davidson's view, that only a belief can justify another belief.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / c. Knowledge closure
How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: Those who deny skepticism but accept closure will have to explain how we know the various 'heavyweight' skeptical hypotheses to be false. Do we then twist the concept of knowledge to fit the twin desiderata of closue and anti-skepticism?
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], Intro)
     A reaction: [He is giving Dretske's view; Dretske says we do twist knowledge] Thus if I remember yesterday, that has the heavyweight implication that the past is real. Hawthorne nicely summarises why closure produces a philosophical problem.
We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: Maybe one cannot know the logical consequences of the proposition that one knows, on account of the fact that small risks add up to big risks.
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 1)
     A reaction: The idea of closure is that the new knowledge has the certainty of logic, and each step is accepted. An array of receding propositions can lose reliability, but that shouldn't apply to logic implications. Assuming monotonic logic, of course.
Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: How could we know that P and Q but not be in a position to know that P (as deniers of closure must say)? If my glass is full of wine, we know 'g is full of wine, and not full of non-wine'. How can we deny that we know it is not full of non-wine?
     From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2)
     A reaction: Hawthorne merely raises this doubt. Dretske is concerned with heavyweight implications, but how do you accept lightweight implications like this one, and then suddenly reject them when they become too heavy? [see p.49]
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism
For internalists we must actually know that the fact caused the belief [Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: The internalist would claim that even if the belief is caused by the true fact to which it refers, it is also necessary that the believer believes that this is how their belief arose, and not some other way.
     From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 3.5)
     A reaction: I'm converted to internalism. If the belief is externally supported in the right way, then it may well be a true belief, but knowledge needs critical faculties, and justifications which can be articulated.
Internalists tend to favour coherent justification, but not the coherence theory of truth [Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: Internalists such as Keith Lehrer tend to suggest that we adopt a coherence theory of justification but reject the coherence theory of truth.
     From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3)
     A reaction: I agree with Lehrer. Truth just isn't coherence, for all sorts of well known reasons (found in this database!). High coherence can be totally false. For justification, though, it is the best we have.