10 ideas
| 8845 | An experience's having propositional content doesn't make it a belief [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: To say that experiences have propositional content is not to say that experiences are beliefs. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: This is important for opponents of foundationalism, because they will not allow a raw experience to act as a justification on its own. Even if concepts, or even propositions, are offered by experience, the crucial evaluation must preceded knowledge. |
| 8842 | The best argument for immediate justification is not the Regress Argument, but considering examples [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: The best argument for immediate justification is not the Regress Argument, but from considering examples, such as I have a headache, I am raising my arm, I am imagining my grandmother, or seeing how dominoes could fill a chessboard. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §3) | |
| A reaction: Most of his examples depend on the fact that they cannot be challenged by anyone else, because they are within his own mind. The dominoes require complex thought. The first two could be erroneous if he was dreaming. |
| 8843 | Impure coherentists accept that perceptions can justify, unlike pure coherentists [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: Pure coherentists claim that a belief can only be justified by its relations to other beliefs; impure coherentists are willing to give some non-beliefs, such as perceptual experiences, a justifying role. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think I would vote for the pure version. The distinction that is needed, I think, is between justification and evidence. You have to surmise causal links and explanations before you can see an experience as evidence, and then justification. |
| 8844 | Coherentism rests on the claim that justifications must be beliefs, with propositional content [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: The Master Argument for coherentism is the claim that a justifier requires asserted propositional content, and that only beliefs represent propositions assertively. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think this claim (which Pryor attacks) is correct. A key point is that almost any experience can be delusional, and in need of critical evaluation. We would even only accept an experience as being necessarily veridical after critical evaluation. |
| 8846 | Reasons for beliefs can be cited to others, unlike a raw headache experience [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: If you have reasons for your belief, they should be considerations you could in principle cite, or give, to someone who doubted or challenged the belief. You can't give some else a non-propositional state like a headache. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §6) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I agree, but if someone asked you to justify your claim that there is a beautiful sunset over the harbour, you could just say 'Look!'. Headaches are too private. The person must still see that the sunset is red, and not the window. |
| 8847 | Beliefs are not chosen, but you can seek ways to influence your belief [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: Ordinarily we make no intentional choices about what to believe, but one can choose to believe something, and then seek ways to get oneself to believe it. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §7) | |
| A reaction: Deliberately reading the articles of a philosopher that you seem to agree with would be an example. Presumably the belief that this is a good belief and should be given support is not itself voluntarily chosen. Ultimately we are helpless. See Idea 1854. |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
| From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
| 7876 | Even if we identify pain with neural events, we can't explain why those neurons cause that feeling [Levine, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Materialists identify pain with the firing of nociceptive-specific neurons in the parietal cortex. Even so, Levine argues, we will still lack any explanation of why nociceptive-specific neurons yield pain. | |
| From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: [Proposed by Levine in 1983] I don't think we need to instantly go dualist when faced with this, but we may all eventually have to concede a bit of mysterianism. The explanation may be holistic (and hence hopelessly complex). |
| 7877 | Only phenomenal states have an explanatory gap; water is fully explained by H2O [Levine, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Levine says the explanatory gap is peculiar to phenomenal states. Once water has been identified with H2O, or temperature with mean kinetic energy, we do not continue to ask why H2O yields water, or why mean kinetic energy yields temperature. | |
| From: report of Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: Everything is mysterious if you think about if for long enough. What about a representational gap? Why do those neurons represent that tree (if the neurons aren't tree-shaped)? To understand qualia, we must understand the whole brain, I suspect. |
| 7878 | Materialism won't explain phenomenal properties, because the latter aren't seen in causal roles [Papineau on Levine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot give materialist explanations of why brain yields phenomenal properties because phenomenal concepts are not associated with descriptions of causal roles in the same way as pre-theoretical terms in other areas of science. | |
| From: comment on Joseph Levine (Purple Haze [2001]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 5.1 | |
| A reaction: I think Papineau has part of the answer, and I certainly like his notion of Conceptual Dualism, but if qualia are physical, there must be a physical account of how they acquire their properties. I think the whole brain needs to be understood first. |