display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
2 ideas
| 12801 | Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley] |
| Full Idea: Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power. | |
| From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317) | |
| A reaction: I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything! |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of composition makes the erroneous assumption that every property of the things that constitute a thing is a property of the thing as well. But every large object is constituted by small parts, and every red object by colourless parts. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: There are nice questions here like 'If you add lots of smallness together, why don't you get extreme smallness?' Colours always make bad examples in such cases (see Idea 5456). Distinctions are needed here (e.g. Idea 7007). |