42 ideas
5988 | Anaximander produced the first philosophy book (and maybe the first book) [Anaximander, by Bodnár] |
Full Idea: Anaximander was the first to produce a philosophical book (later conventionally titled 'On Nature'), if not the first to produce a book at all. | |
From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by István Bodnár - Anaximander | |
A reaction: Wow! Presumably there were Egyptian 'books', but this still sounds like a stupendous claim to fame. |
1496 | The earth is stationary, because it is in the centre, and has no more reason to move one way than another [Anaximander, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Something which is established in the centre and has equality in relation to the extremes has no more reason to move up than it has down or to the sides (so the earth is stationary) | |
From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], A26) by Aristotle - On the Heavens 295b11 |
10354 | Correspondence could be with other beliefs, rather than external facts [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The correspondence theory of truth does not commit one to the view the reality is mind-independent. There is no reason why the 'facts' that correspond to true beliefs might not themselves be beliefs or ideas. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: This seems important, as it is very easy to assume that espousal of correspondence necessarily goes with realism about the external world. It is surprising to think that a full-blown Idealist might espouse the correspondence theory. |
10353 | Tarskians distinguish truth from falsehood by relations between members of sets [Kusch] |
Full Idea: According to the Tarskians we separate out truths from falsehoods by tracing the relations between members of different sets. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.16) |
14874 | Anaximander saw the contradiction in the world - that its own qualities destroy it [Anaximander, by Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Anaximander discovers the contradictory character of our world: it perishes from its own qualities. | |
From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 19 [239] | |
A reaction: A lovely gloss on Anaximander, though I am not sure that I understand what Nietzsche means. |
10337 | We can have knowledge without belief, if others credit us with knowledge [Kusch] |
Full Idea: We can have knowledge that p without believing that p. It is enough that others credit us with the knowledge. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: [He is discussing Welbourne 1993] This is an extreme of the communitarian view. |
10357 | Methodological Solipsism assumes all ideas could be derived from one mind [Kusch] |
Full Idea: 'Methodological solipsism' says merely that everyone can conceive of themselves as the only subject. Everyone can construct all referents of their thought and talk out of complexes of their very own experience. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
A reaction: The possibility of this can be denied (e.g. by Putnam 1983, dating back to Wittgenstein). I too would doubt it, though finding a good argument seems a forlorn hope. |
17771 | How we evaluate evidence depends on our background beliefs [Bayne] |
Full Idea: A claim that might be very plausible given one set of background beliefs might be highly implausible when evaluated in the light of a different set of background beliefs. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.7) |
17770 | Clifford's dictum seems to block our beliefs in morality, politics and philosophy [Bayne] |
Full Idea: Endorsing Clifford's dictum threatens to undermine our right to hold many of our most cherished beliefs about morality, politics, and philosophy, for these are domains in which it is notoriously difficult to secure consensus. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: I would say that those beliefs are amenable to evidence, but the evidence is often highly generalised, which is what makes those subjects notoriously difficult. The existence of a convention is a sort of evidence. |
10339 | Foundations seem utterly private, even from oneself at a later time [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Foundationalists place the foundations of knowledge at a point where they are in principle accessible only to the individual knower. They cannot be 'shared' with another person, or with oneself at a later time. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: Kusch is defending an extremely social view of knowledge. Being private to an individual may just he an unfortunate epistemological fact. Being unavailable even to one's later self seems a real problem for foundational certainty. |
10331 | Testimony is reliable if it coheres with evidence for a belief, and with other beliefs [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony must be reliable since its deliveries cohere both with input from other information routes in the formation of single beliefs, and with other types of beliefs in the formation of systems of belief. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: Kusch criticises this view (credited to C.A.J. Coady 1992) as too individualistic , but it sounds to me dead right. I take a major appeal of the coherence account of justification to be its capacity to extend seamlessly out into external testimony. |
10338 | The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: I endorse this idea, which endorses Davidson's slogan on the subject. The key thought is that a 'pure' sensation is uninterpreted, and so cannot justify anything. It is only once it generates a proposition that it can justify. But McDowell 1994. |
10340 | Individualistic coherentism lacks access to all of my beliefs, or critical judgement of my assessment [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Individualistic versions of coherentism assume that a belief is justified if it fits with all, or most, of my contemporaneous beliefs. But who has access to that totality? Who can judge my assessment? From what position could it be judged? | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Though I agree with Kusch on the social aspect of coherence, I don't think these are major criticisms. Who can access, or critically evaluate a society's body of supposedly coherent beliefs? We just do our best. |
10345 | Individual coherentism cannot generate the necessary normativity [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Standard forms of coherentism are unable to account for normativity, because of their common individualism. Normativity cannot be generated within the isolated individual, or in the causal interaction between world and individual mind. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: This thought leads to belief in rationalism and the a priori, not (as Kusch hopes) to the social dimension. How can social normativity get off the ground if there is none of it to be found in individuals? The criteria of coherence seem to be given. |
10350 | Cultures decide causal routes, and they can be critically assessed [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Assessments of causal routes are specific to cultures, and thus not beyond dialectical justification. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This is a good defence of the social and communitarian view against those who are trying to be thoroughly naturalistic and physicalist by relying entirely on causal processes for all explanation, even though I sympathise with such naturalism. |
10343 | Process reliabilism has been called 'virtue epistemology', resting on perception, memory, reason [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Process reliabilism is sometimes subsumed under the label 'virtue epistemology', so that processes are 'epistemically virtuous' if they lead mostly to true beliefs. The 'intellectual virtues' here are perception, memory or reasoning. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
A reaction: I am shocked that 'intellectual virtue' should be hijacked by reliabilists, suggesting that it even applies to a good clock. I like the Aristotelian idea that sound knowledge rests on qualities of character in the knower - including social qualities. |
10341 | Justification depends on the audience and one's social role [Kusch] |
Full Idea: How a claim (about an X-ray) needs to be justified depends on whether one is confronted by a group of laypersons, or of experts, and is prescribed by one's social role. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly right. I cannot think of any absolute criterion for justification which doesn't play straight into the hands of sceptics. Final and certain justification is an incoherent notion. But I am a little more individualistic than Kusch. |
10334 | Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This is very thought-provoking. A key concept linking the two would be 'respect'. Consider also 'experts'. |
10336 | Powerless people are assumed to be unreliable, even about their own lives [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The powerless in society are not usually taken to be trustworthy witnesses even when it comes to providing information about their own lives. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This is where epistemology shades off into politics and the writings of Foucault. |
10324 | Testimony does not just transmit knowledge between individuals - it actually generates knowledge [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony is not just a means of transmission of complete items of knowledge from and to an individual. Testimony is almost always generative of knowledge. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear how my testimony could fail to be knowledge for me, but become knowledge just because I pass it to you. I might understand what I say better than you did. When fools pool their testimony, presumably not much knowledge results. |
10327 | Some want to reduce testimony to foundations of perceptions, memories and inferences [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Reductionalists about testimony are foundationalists by temperament. ...Their project amounts to justifying our testimonial beliefs in terms of perceptions, memories and inferences. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: Kusch wants to claim that the sharing of testimony is the means by which knowledge is created. My line is something like knowledge being founded on a social coherence, which is an extension of internal individual coherence. |
10329 | Testimony won't reduce to perception, if perception depends on social concepts and categories [Kusch] |
Full Idea: How can we hope to reduce testimony to perception if the way we perceive the world is to a considerable extent shaped by concepts and categories that we have learned from others? | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: To me this sounds like good support for coherentism, the benign circle between my reason, my experience, and the testimony and reason of others. Asking how the circle could get started shows ignorance of biology. |
10330 | A foundation is what is intelligible, hence from a rational source, and tending towards truth [Kusch] |
Full Idea: It can be argued that testimony is non-reductive because it relies on the fact that whatever is intelligible is likely to come from a rational source, and that rational sources, by their very nature, tend towards the truth. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4 n7) | |
A reaction: [He cites Tyler Burge 1993, 1997] If this makes testimony non-reductive, how would one assess whether the testimony is 'intelligible'? |
10325 | Vindicating testimony is an expression of individualism [Kusch] |
Full Idea: To believe that testimony needs a general vindication is itself an expression of individualism. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: Kusch is a spokesman for Communitarian Epistemology. Surely we are allowed to identify the criteria for what makes a good witness? Ask a policeman. |
10335 | Myths about lonely genius are based on epistemological individualism [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Many myths about the lonely scientific genius underwrite epistemological individualism. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: They all actually say that they 'stood on the shoulders of giants', and they are invariably immersed in the contemporary researches of teams of like-minded people. How surprised were the really expert contemporaries by Newton, Einstein, Gödel? |
10323 | Communitarian Epistemology says 'knowledge' is a social status granted to groups of people [Kusch] |
Full Idea: I propose 'communitarian epistemology' - claiming first that the term 'knowledge' marks a social status, and is dependent on the existence of communities, and second that this social status is typically granted to groups of people. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I find this very congenial, though Kusch goes a little far when he claims that knowledge is largely created by social groups. He allows that Robinson Crusoe might have knowledge of his island, but can't give a decent account of it. |
10348 | Private justification is justification to imagined other people [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Coming to convince myself is actually to form a pretend communal belief with pretend others, ..which is clearly parasitic on the case where the others are real. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This slightly desperate move is a way for 'communitarian' epistemologists to deal with Robinson Crusoe cases. I think Kusch is right, but it is a bit hard to prove that this is what is 'actually' going on. |
10349 | To be considered 'an individual' is performed by a society [Kusch] |
Full Idea: One cannot even have the social status of 'being an individual' unless it has been conferred on one by a communal performative belief. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This sounds crazy until you think of the mentality of a tenth generation slave in a fully slave-owning society. |
17766 | Physicalism correlates brain and mind, explains causation by thought, and makes nature continuous [Bayne] |
Full Idea: The motivations for physicalism about the mind are that it accounts for correlations between states of the brain and states of thought, ...that it accounts for the causal role of thoughts, ...and that it does justice to the continuity of nature. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: [summary] That is a pretty good summary of why I am a physicalist about the mind. I take all other theories to be dead footnotes in the history of thought - unless someone can produce a really good new argument. Which they can't. |
17768 | Perception reveals what animals think, but humans can disengage thought from perception [Bayne] |
Full Idea: One striking feature of human thought involves our ability to disengage the focus of thought from that of our perceptual attention. ...To get a fix on what an animal is thinking about, one need only determine the object of its perceptual attention. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: What happens when an animal closes its eyes, or stirs violently during sleep? I take the hallmark of human thought to be its multi-level character, and this offers nice evidence for that view. Doing philosophy while driving a car is very revealing. |
17769 | Some people centre space on themselves; others centre space on the earth [Bayne] |
Full Idea: Egocentric conceptions of space employ a frame of reference that is focused on oneself; ...geocentric conceptions of space, by contrast, employ a frame of reference that is centred on the earth. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Famously, Europeans nearly always employ the egocentric conception, but many other cultures are geocentric. Thus the salt cellar is either 'to my left' or 'to the west'. In the latter view, everyone always knows their orientation (even indoors?). |
17767 | The alternative to a language of thought is map-like or diagram-like thought [Bayne] |
Full Idea: One could think that the structure of thought has more in common with that of maps or diagrams, and is not particularly language-like. | |
From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: It seems unwise to be ensnared by analogies on this one, since the phenomenon is buried deep. You can no more infer what goes on underneath than you can infer electrons from looking at trees? |
10344 | Our experience may be conceptual, but surely not the world itself? [Kusch] |
Full Idea: I am unconvinced by McDowell's arguments in favour of treating the world as itself conceptual. Granted that our experience is conceptual in quality; it still does not follow that the world itself is conceptual. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
A reaction: I would take Kusch's point to be a given in any discussion of concepts, and McDowell as a non-starter on this one. I am inclined to believe that we do have non-conceptual experiences, but I take them to be epistemologically useless. |
10358 | Often socialising people is the only way to persuade them [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Often we can convince members of other cultures only by socializing them into our culture. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
A reaction: This looks both true and interesting, and is good support for Kusch's communitarian epistemology. What actually persuades certainly doesn't have to be reasons, and may be almost entirely social. |
10333 | Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This thought offers an account of epistemology which could fit in with communitarian political views. See the ideas of Martin Kusch in this database. |
405 | The essential nature, whatever it is, of the non-limited is everlasting and ageless [Anaximander] |
Full Idea: The essential nature, whatever it is, of the non-limited is everlasting and ageless. | |
From: Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], B2), quoted by (who?) - where? |
13222 | The Boundless cannot exist on its own, and must have something contrary to it [Aristotle on Anaximander] |
Full Idea: Those thinkers are in error who postulate ...a single matter, for this cannot exist without some 'perceptible contrariety': this Boundless, which they identify with the 'original real', must be either light or heavy, either hot or cold. | |
From: comment on Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 329a10 | |
A reaction: A dubious objection, I would say. If there has to be a contrasting cold thing to any hot thing, what happens when the cold thing is removed? |
404 | Things begin and end in the Unlimited, and are balanced over time according to justice [Anaximander] |
Full Idea: The non-limited is the original material of existing things; their source is also that to which they return after destruction, according to necessity; they give justice and make reparation to each other for injustice, according to the arrangement of Time. | |
From: Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], B1), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 24.13- | |
A reaction: Simplicius is quoting Theophrastus |
1495 | Anaximander introduced the idea that the first principle and element of things was the Boundless [Anaximander, by Simplicius] |
Full Idea: Anaximander said that the first principle and element of existing things was the boundless; it was he who originally introduced this name for the first principle. | |
From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE], A09) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.24.14- | |
A reaction: Simplicius is quoting Theophrastus |
10351 | Natural kinds are social institutions [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Natural kinds are social institutions. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: I can see what he means, but I take this to be deeply wrong. A clarification of what exactly is meant by a 'natural kind' is needed before we can make any progress with this one. Is a village a natural kind? Or a poodle? Or a shoal? |
1746 | The parts of all things are susceptible to change, but the whole is unchangeable [Anaximander, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: The parts of all things are susceptible to change, but the whole is unchangeable. | |
From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.An.2 |
10332 | Omniscience is incoherent, since knowledge is a social concept [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The very idea of omniscience is dubious, at least for the communitarian epistemologist, since knowing is a social state, and knowledge is a social status, needing a position in a social network. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: A nice test case. Would an omniscient mind have evidence for its beliefs? Would it continually check for coherence? Is it open to criticism? Does it even entertain the possibility of error? Could another 'omniscient' mind challenge it? |