25 ideas
4262 | If the only aim was consistent beliefs then new evidence and experiments would be irrelevant [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If mere consistency is our aim in achieving a coherent set of beliefs, then new evidence and experiments are irrelevant. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (The Internalist Conception of Justification [1980], §VIII) | |
A reaction: An important reminder. What epistemic duty requires us to attend to anomalous observations, instead of sweeping them under the carpet? |
4045 | Children may have three innate principles which enable them to learn to count [Goldman] |
Full Idea: It has been proposed (on the basis of observations) that young children have three innate principles of counting - one-to-one correspondence of number to item, stable order for numbers, and cardinality (which labels the nth item counted). | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.60) | |
A reaction: I like the idea of observed patterns as central (which is the one-to-one principle). But the other two principles are plausible, and show why pure empiricism won't work. |
4044 | Rat behaviour reveals a considerable ability to count [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Rats can determine the number of times they have pressed a lever up to at least twenty-four presses,…and can consistently turn down the fifth tunnel on the left in a maze. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.58) | |
A reaction: This seems to encourage an empirical view of maths (pattern recognition?) rather than a Platonic one. Or numbers are innate in rat brains? |
4048 | Infant brains appear to have inbuilt ontological categories [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Infant behaviour implies inbuilt ontological categories of thing, place, event, path, action, sound, manner, amount and number. ...There is an algebra of relationships between them. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.109) | |
A reaction: Interesting. We would expect the categories in infant brains to have instrumental value, but we don't have to accept them as true. Adults (even Aristotle) are big infants. |
23551 | It is necessary for a belief that it be held for a length of time [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A mental state cannot count as a belief unless it has a reasonable life expectancy. It must be the sort of thing that one is disposed to assert not only now but in the future too. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 2.3) | |
A reaction: There are obvious counterexamples, where a firm belief is strongly formed, only to be dashed by a counterexample (such as a new witness in court) soon afterwards. That said, this idea is obviously correct. |
4043 | Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman] |
Full Idea: An elephant may be fully represented by nine primitive shapes ('geons'), but it may require as few as three geons in appropriate relations to be correctly identified. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.7) | |
A reaction: Encouraging the idea of the mind as a maker of maps and models |
4049 | The way in which colour experiences are evoked is physically odd and unpredictable [Goldman] |
Full Idea: A unique yellow experience may be evoked with monochrome light of 580nm, or a mixture of 540nm and 670nm. ..Our interpretation of colour experience is a highly idiosyncratic artefact of our visual system. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.117) | |
A reaction: This confirms what I have always thought - that colour (as qualia) is strictly a feature of minds, not of the world. |
4047 | Gestalt psychology proposes inbuilt proximity, similarity, smoothness and closure principles [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Gestalt psychology claims that there are at least four unlearned factors in perceptual grouping - the principles of proximity (close things), of similarity, of good continuation (extending lines in a smooth course), and closure (which completes figures). | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.103) | |
A reaction: This offers a bridge between Hume's associationism and rationalist claims of innate ideas |
8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
6871 | We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2) | |
A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember. |
6872 | Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind. |
6874 | Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4) | |
A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem. |
8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
23558 | Offering knowledge needs accuracy and sincerity; receiving it needs testimonial justice [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Accuracy and Sincerity sustain trust as regards contributing knowledge to the pool; Testimonial Justice helps sustain trust as regards acquiring knowledge from the pool. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 5.1) | |
A reaction: Fricker's contribution is to show that acquiring knowledge has its own virtues, alongside discovering and communicating it. I take the underlying virtue to be absolute respect for all possible contributors. |
6873 | Coherent justification seems to require retrieving all our beliefs simultaneously [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The problem of Concurrent Retrieval is a problem for internalism, notably coherentism, because an agent could ascertain coherence of her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
A reaction: Sounds neat, but not very convincing. Goldman is relying on scepticism about short-term memory, but all belief and knowledge will collapse if we go down that road. We couldn't do simple arithmetic if Goldman's point were right. |
6875 | Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §6) | |
A reaction: As an argument for externalism this seems bogus. I am not sure that truth is either 'internal' or 'external'. How could the truth of 3+2=5 be external? Facts are mostly external, but I take truth to be a relation between internal and external. |
8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
23553 | Testimonial judgement is not logical, but produces reasons and motivations [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Moral/testimonial judgement is non-inferential, uncodifiable, intrinsically motivating, intrinsically reason-giving, and typically has an emotional aspect. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Fricker's compressed summary of her findings about testimony. The first words indicate her belief that assessment of testimony is a moral affair. |
23550 | Burge says we are normally a priori entitled to believe testimony [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: In Tyler Burge's view we have an a priori entitlement for believing what others tell us, other things being equal. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 1.3 n11) | |
A reaction: [Burge 'Content Preservation' 1992] Close to Davidson's Charity (that without a default assumption of truth-speaking language won't work at all). Davidson is right about casual conversation, but for important testimony Burge should be more cautious. |
23552 | We assess testimonial probabilities by the speaker, the listener, the facts, and the circumstances [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A person should receive the word of his interlocutor in the light of the probability that someone like that would (be able and willing to) to tell someone like him the truth about something like this in circumstances like these. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.2) | |
A reaction: That's a pretty good summary of the rational response to testimony. I can't think of any other factors. |
23555 | Assessing credibility involves the impact of both the speaker's and the listener's social identity [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: For a hearer to identify the impact of identity power in their credibility judgements they must be alert to the impact not only of the speaker's social identity, but also the impact of the own social identity on their credibility judgements. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [why are all sentences in academic writing twice as long as they need to be? - that question is deeper than it looks!] This is a salutary warning. Not just 'what are my prejudices?', but also 'what is this person willing to tell a person like me?'. |
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 |
8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
23554 | Judgements can be unreflective and non-inferential, yet rational, by being sensitive to experience [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Our idea of testimonial sensibility is a spontaneous critical sensitivity permanently in training and adapting to experience. …This gives us a picture of how judgements can be rational yet unreflective, critical yet non-inferential. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.4) | |
A reaction: Love this. I want to connect human reasoning to good judgement by animals, and I offer the word 'sensible' to bridge the gap. Dogs and scientists can be sensible. Fricker spells out more fully what I have in mind, with reference to testimony. |
23557 | To judge agents in remote times and cultures we need a moral resentment weaker than blame [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: I think that identifying forms of moral resentment that fall short of blame but which are agent-directed is the key to achieving appropriate moral response across historical and cultural distance. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Very good. Simple blame for horrible actions performed in remote rather horrible societies is pointless. But switching off moral sensibilities when reading history and anthropology looks like a slippery slope, so 'moral resentment' is nice. |