Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Melvin Fitting, Philip Kitcher and Pierre Simon de Laplace

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3 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
12413 A 'warrant' is a process which ensures that a true belief is knowledge [Kitcher]
     Full Idea: A 'warrant' refers to those processes which produce belief 'in the right way': X knows that p iff p, and X believes that p, and X's belief that p was produced by a process which is a warrant for it.
     From: Philip Kitcher (The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge [1984], 01.2)
     A reaction: That is, a 'warrant' is a justification which makes a belief acceptable as knowledge. Traditionally, warrants give you certainty (and are, consequently, rather hard to find). I would say, in the modern way, that warrants are agreed by social convention.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / c. Defeasibility
20473 If experiential can defeat a belief, then its justification depends on the defeater's absence [Kitcher, by Casullo]
     Full Idea: According to Kitcher, if experiential evidence can defeat someone's justification for a belief, then their justification depends on the absence of that experiential evidence.
     From: report of Philip Kitcher (The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge [1984], p.89) by Albert Casullo - A Priori Knowledge 2.3
     A reaction: Sounds implausible. There are trillions of possible defeaters for most beliefs, but to say they literally depend on trillions of absences seems a very odd way of seeing the situation
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony
7458 The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking]
     Full Idea: The credibility of a witness is in part a function of the story being reported. When the story claims to have infinite value, the temptation to lie for personal benefit is asymptotically infinite.
     From: report of Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820], Ch.XI) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8
     A reaction: Laplace seems to especially have reports of miracles in mind. This observation certainly dashes any dreams one might have of producing a statistical measure of the reliability of testimony.