50 ideas
| 14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Mackie (1983) dismisses the Principle of Sufficient Reason quickly, arguing that it is self-refuting: there is no sufficient reason to accept it. However, a principle is not invalidated by not applying to itself; it can be a powerful heuristic tool. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VI) | |
| A reaction: If God was entirely rational, and created everything, that would be a sufficient reason to accept the principle. You would never, though, get to the reason why God was entirely rational. Something will always elude the principle. |
| 3593 | The only way to specify the corresponding fact is asserting the sentence [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The trouble with appeal to facts in the correspondence theory is that, in general, we have no way of indicating what fact a sentence, when true, corresponds to other than asserting the sentence. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.12) |
| 3585 | Coherence needs positive links, not just absence of conflict [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: It is often claimed that coherence is more than 'absence of conflict' between beliefs; it also involves 'positive connections'. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10) |
| 3584 | Justification needs coherence, while truth might be ideal coherence [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Contemporary coherence theorists are advancing a theory of justification, not of truth, …with those who argue that truth is also coherence explaining it in terms of ideal coherence, or coherence at the limit of enquiry. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10) |
| 14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: The problem with the redundancy theory of truth is that it conflates the metalinguistic notion of bivalence with a theorem of the object language, namely the law of excluded middle. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr3) |
| 3599 | Deduction shows entailments, not what to believe [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The rules of deduction are rules of entailment, not rules of inference. They tell us what follows from what, not what to believe on the basis of what. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.18) |
| 14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: If there are any genuine relations at all between spatio-temporal objects, then they are all either spatio-temporal or causal. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds too easy, but I have wracked my brains for counterexamples and failed to find any. How about qualitative relations? |
| 14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held, and I think correctly so, that a necessary condition for the existence of relations is that both of the relata exist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 3.III Pr4) | |
| A reaction: This is either trivial or false. Relations in the actual world self-evidently relate components of it. But I seem able to revere Sherlock Holmes, and speculate about relations between possible entities. |
| 16740 | A power is not a cause, but an aptitude for a cause [Zabarella] |
| Full Idea: A power is not the cause of an operation, but only the cause's aptitude for operating. | |
| From: Jacob Zabarella (De rebus naturalibus [1590], De fac anim 4:col 692), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5 | |
| A reaction: His example is the power of running, which is actually caused by the soul (or whatever), which generates the power. A power is a very superficial thing. |
| 3591 | We could never pin down how many beliefs we have [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Asking how many beliefs I have is like asking how many drops of water there are in a bucket. If I believe my dog is in the garden, do I also believe he is not in the house, or in Siberia? | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.11) |
| 3582 | Propositions make error possible, so basic experiential knowledge is impossible [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Propositional content is inseparable from possible error. Therefore no judgement, however modest, is indubitable. So if basic experiential knowledge has to be indubitable, there is no such knowledge. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 8) |
| 3592 | Phenomenalism is a form of idealism [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenalism is a form of idealism. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.12) |
| 3579 | Sense data avoid the danger of misrepresenting the world [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The point of insisting on the absolute immediacy of sense data is that representation always seems to involve the possibility of misrepresentation. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 8) |
| 3581 | Sense data can't give us knowledge if they are non-propositional [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Acquaintance with sense data is supposed to be a form of non-propositional knowledge, but how can something be non-propositional and yet knowledge? | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 8) |
| 3564 | Is it people who are justified, or propositions? [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: What exactly is supposed to be 'justified': a person's believing some particular proposition, or the proposition that he believes? | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: A key distinction. See my comment on Idea 3752. What would justify a sign saying 'treasure buried here'? People can be justified in believing falsehoods. How could a false proposition be justified? |
| 8851 | Coherentists say that regress problems are assuming 'linear' justification [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: From the point of view of the coherentist, Agrippa's Dilemma fails because it presupposes a 'linear' conception of justifying inference. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Without Immediate Justification [2005], §2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bonjour 1985 for this view] Since a belief may have several justifications, and one belief could justify a host of others, there certainly isn't a simple line of justifications. I agree with the coherentist picture here. |
| 3595 | What works always takes precedence over theories [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: A theory that represents working practices as unworkable is a bad theory. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: Good point. There's a lot of this about in epistemology, especially accusations of circularity or infinite regress, which (if true) don't somehow seem to worry the cove on the Clapham omnibus. |
| 8849 | Traditional foundationalism is radically internalist [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Traditional foundationalism is radically internalist. The justification-making factors for beliefs, basic and otherwise, are all open to view, and perhaps even actual objects of awareness. I am always in a position to know that I know. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Without Immediate Justification [2005], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is a helpful if one is trying to draw a map of the debate. An externalist foundationalism would have to terminate in the external fact which was the object of knowledge (via some reliable channel), but that is the truth, not the justification. |
| 3580 | Experience must be meaningful to act as foundations [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: If we are to treat experience as the foundation of knowledge, then experience must itself be understood to involve propositional content. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right, but since pure 'experience' obviously doesn't have propositional content, because it needs interpretation and evaluation, then this strategy won't work. |
| 8853 | Basic judgements are immune from error because they have no content [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Basic judgements threaten to buy their immunity from error at the cost of being drained of descriptive content altogether. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Without Immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: This is probably the key objection to foundationalism. As you import sufficient content into basic experiences to enable them to actually justify a set of beliefs, you find you have imported all sorts of comparisons and classifications as well. |
| 3578 | Are empirical foundations judgements or experiences? [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Empirical foundationists must decide whether knowledge ultimately rests on either beliefs or judgements about experience, or on the experiences or sensations themselves. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This clarifies the key issue very nicely, and I firmly vote for the former option. The simplest point is that error is possible about what sensations are taken to be of, so they won't do on their own. |
| 8855 | Sensory experience may be fixed, but it can still be misdescribed [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The fact that experiential contents cannot be other than they are, as far as sensory awareness goes, does not imply that we cannot misdescribe them, as in misreporting the number of speckles on a speckled hen (Chisholm's example). | |
| From: Michael Williams (Without Immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: [Chisholm 1942 is cited] Such experiences couldn't be basic beliefs if there was a conflict between their intrinsic nature and the description I used in discussing them. |
| 3576 | Foundationalists are torn between adequacy and security [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The foundationalists dilemma is to define a basis for knowledge modest enough to be secure but rich enough to be adequate. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: ..And that is just what they are unable to do, precisely because adequate support would have to have enough content to be defeasibe or fallible. |
| 3577 | Strong justification eliminates error, but also reduces our true beliefs [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: A strongly justificationist view of rationality may not be so rational; we want the truth, but avoiding all errors and maximising our number of true beliefs are not the same thing. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: An interesting dilemma - to avoid all errors, believing nothing; to maximise true belief, believe everything. It is rational to follow intuition, guesses, and a wing and a prayer - once you are experienced and educated. |
| 3589 | Why should diverse parts of our knowledge be connected? [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Why should political theory ever have much to do with quantum physics, or pet care with parliamentary history? | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This hardly demolishes the coherence account of justification, since your views on pet care had better be coherent, for your pet's sake. It's a pity people can make their politics cohere with their ethics. |
| 3590 | Coherence theory must give a foundational status to coherence itself [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Coherence theory implicitly assigns the criteria of coherence a special status. …In so far as this status is assigned a priori, the coherence theory represents a rationalistic variant of foundationalism. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Nice move, to accuse coherence theorists of foundationalism! Wrong, though, because the a priori principles of coherence are not basic beliefs, but evolved pragmatic procedures (or something...). |
| 3571 | Externalism does not require knowing that you know [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: From an externalist point of view, knowing about one's reliability is not required for 'first-order' knowledge. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Ah. 'First-order knowledge' - what's that? What we used to call 'true belief', I would say. Adequate for animals, and a good guide to daily life, but uncritical and unjustifiable. |
| 3574 | Externalism ignores the social aspect of knowledge [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: A problem with pure externalism is that it ignores the social dimension of knowledge. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be contradicted by Idea 3573, which allows a social dimension to agreement over what is reliable. I am inclined to take knowledge as an entirely social concept. |
| 3569 | In the causal theory of knowledge the facts must cause the belief [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: According to Goldman's early causal theory of knowledge, my belief that p counts as knowledge if and only if it is caused by the fact that p. This is sufficient as well as necessary, and so does not involve justification. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: I take his theory simply to be false because what causes a belief is not what justifies it. I expect my mother to ring; the phone rings; I 'know' it is my mother (and it is), because I strongly expect it. |
| 3567 | How could there be causal relations to mathematical facts? [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear what would even be meant by supposing that there are causal relations to mathematical facts. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: I agree, though platonists seem to be willing to entertain the possibility that there are causal relations, for which no further explanation can be given. Better is knowledge without a causal relation. |
| 3586 | Only a belief can justify a belief [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Justification requires logical rather than causal connections. That is the point of the slogan that only a belief can justify a belief. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: It seems better to talk of 'rational' connections, rather than 'logical' connections. It isn't 'logical' to believe that someone despises me because their lip is faintly curled. |
| 3573 | Externalist reliability refers to a range of conventional conditions [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The radical externalists' key notion is 'reliability', which is a normative condition governing adequate performance, involving reference to a range of conditions which we decide rather than discover. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: If we can decide whether a source is reliable, we can also decide whether a reliable source has performed well on this occasion, and that will always take precedence. |
| 3565 | Sometimes I ought to distrust sources which are actually reliable [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: I may reach a belief using a procedure that is in fact reliable, but which I ought to distrust. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: The tramp on the park bench who gives good share tips. The clock that is finally working, but has been going haywire for weeks. Reliabilism is a bad theory. |
| 3566 | We control our beliefs by virtue of how we enquire [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: We control our beliefs by virtue of how we enquire. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 1) |
| 8852 | In the context of scepticism, externalism does not seem to be an option [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: In the peculiar context of the skeptical challenge, it is easy to persuade oneself that externalism is not an option. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Without Immediate Justification [2005], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is because externalism sees justification as largely non-conscious, but when faced with scepticism, the justifications need to be spelled out, and therefore internalised. So are sceptical discussions basic, or freakish anomalies? |
| 3594 | Scepticism just reveals our limited ability to explain things [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: All the sceptic's arguments show is that there are limits to our capacity to give reasons or cite evidence. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.13) |
| 3575 | Scepticism can involve discrepancy, relativity, infinity, assumption and circularity [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: The classical Five Modes of Scepticism are Discrepancy (people always disagree), Relativity ('according to you'), Infinity (infinite regress of questions), Assumption (ending in dogma) and Circularity (end up where you started). | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: I take Relativity to be different from scepticism (because, roughly, it says there is nothing to know), and the others go with Agrippa's Trilemma of justification, which may have solutions. |
| 3587 | Seeing electrons in a cloud chamber requires theory [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Armed with enough theory, we can see electrons in a cloud chamber. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10) |
| 3588 | Foundationalists base meaning in words, coherentists base it in sentences [Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: In the foundationalist picture the meaning of individual words (defined ostensively) is primary, and that of sentences is derivative. For coherentists sentences come first, with meaning understood functionally or inferentially. | |
| From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Coherentism about language doesn't imply coherentism about justification. On language I vote for foundationalism, because I am impressed by the phenomenon of compositionality. |
| 16571 | Prime matter is exceptionally obscure [Zabarella] |
| Full Idea: Nothing in the natural world seems to be more obscure and difficult to grasp than the prime matter of things. | |
| From: Jacob Zabarella (De rebus naturalibus [1590], I.1 col 133), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 2.1 | |
| A reaction: This spells the beginning of the end for 'prime matter', since a late scholastic is doubting it, even before the scientists got to work. Most modern Aristotelians slide quietly past prime matter, as unhelpful. |
| 14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity, with its definition of simultaneity, is shot through with verificationist assumptions. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIc) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Sklar with this] I love hearing such points made, because all my instincts have rebelled against Einstein's story, even after I have been repeatedly told how stupid I am, and how I should study more maths etc. |
| 14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Special Relativity denies absolute simultaneity, and therefore requires a past and a future, as well as a present. The Presentist, however, only requires the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VII) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to accuse Relativity of ontological extravagence. When it 'requires' past and future, that may not be a massive commitment, since the whole theory is fairly operationalist, according to Putnam. |
| 14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction). | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III) | |
| A reaction: [My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism. |
| 14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: 'No-Futurists' believe in the real existence of the past and present but not the future, and hold that the world grows as more and more facts come into existence. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IIb) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997] My sympathies are with Presentism, but there seems not denying that past events fix truths in a way that future events don't. The unchangeability of past events seems to make them factual. |
| 14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Presentists have a difficulty with how they can help themselves to the notion of 'earlier than' without having to invoke real relata, and how presentism can distinguish the past from the future. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 2.IV) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is to infer the past from the present (fossils), and infer the future from the present (ticking bomb). But what is it that is being inferred, if the past and future are denied a priori? Tricky! |
| 14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: It seems that presentism cannot accommodate causation at all. In a true instance of 'c causes e', it seems to follow that both c and e exist, and it is widely accepted that c is earlier than e. But for presentists that means c and e can't coexist. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: A nice problem. Obviously if the flying ball smashed the window, we are left with only the effect existing - otherwise we could intercept the ball and prevent the disaster. To say this cause and this effect coexist would be even dafter than the problem. |
| 14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Since for presentism there is an ontologically significant and basic sense in which events are present, we should expect a definition of simultaneity in terms of presentness, rather than the other way round. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: Love it. I don't see how you can even articulate questions about simultaneity if you don't already have a notion of presentness. What are the relata you are enquiring about? |
| 14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Theories of time are in two broad categories, the tenseless and the tensed theories. In tenseless theories, all times are equally real, as are all objects located at them, and there is no passage of time from future to present to past. It's the B-series. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIa) | |
| A reaction: It might solve a few of the problems, but is highly counterintuitive. Presumably it makes the passage of time an illusion, and gives no account of how events 'happen', or of their direction, and it leaves causation out on a limb. I'm afraid not. |
| 14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: Objects in the B-series are earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with each other, whereas objects in the A-series are earlier than, later than or simultaneous with the present. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro IIb) | |
| A reaction: Must we choose? Two past events relate to each other, but there is a further relation when 'now' falls between the events. If I must choose, I suppose I go for the A-series view. The B-series is a subsequent feat of imagination. McTaggart agreed. |
| 14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |
| Full Idea: We say that time 'flows', that the past is 'fixed' but the future is 'open'; we only dread the future, but not the past; we remember the past but not the future; we plan for the future but not the past. | |
| From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], Intro III) | |
| A reaction: These seem pretty overwhelming reasons for accepting an asymmetry between the past and the future. If you reject that, you seem to be mired in a multitude of contradictions. Your error theory is going to be massive. |