13 ideas
| 6900 | A prior understanding of beauty is needed to assert that the Form of the Beautiful is beautiful [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: If it were asserted that the Form of the Beautiful was itself beautiful, such a statement would require a prior understanding of the concept of beauty, so would immediately lead to an infinite regress, so the Forms can't be self-predicating. | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice clear statement of the mess that Plato gets himself into if he wants the Forms to be self-predicating. Clearly the Form of the Beautiful can't be beautiful, but must be that which gives other things their beauty. |
| 6956 | At what point does an object become 'whole'? [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: At what point does an object become 'whole'? | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This nice question strikes me as the central one in mereology. It is tempting to reply that the matter is entirely conventional, but there seems an obvious fact about something missing if one piece is absent from a jigsaw, or a cube is chipped. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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?'. |
| 7335 | The Chinese Room should be able to ask itself questions in Mandarin [Westaway] |
| Full Idea: If the Chinese Room is functionally equivalent to a Mandarin speaker, it ought to be able to ask itself questions in Mandarin (and it can't). | |
| From: Luke Westaway (talk [2005]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Searle might triumphantly say that this proves there is no understanding in the room, but the objection won't go away, because the room is presumably functionally equivalent to a speaker, and not just a mere translator (who might use mechanical tricks). |
| 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. |
| 8326 | Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Basic causal relations can, as a consequence of our scientific knowledge, be identified with certain physicalistic [sic] relations between objects that can be characterized in terms of transference of either energy or momentum between objects. | |
| From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by E Sosa / M Tooley - Introduction to 'Causation' §1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a transfer of momentum is a transfer of energy. If only anyone had the foggiest idea what energy actually is, we'd be doing well. What is energy made of? 'No identity without substance', I say. I like Fair's idea. |
| 10379 | Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Fair, who originated the energy flow view of causation, moved to a view that understands connection in terms of counterfactuals about energy flow. | |
| From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.1.2 | |
| A reaction: David Fair was a pupil of David Lewis, the king of the counterfactual view. To me that sounds like a disappointing move, but it is hard to think that a mere flow of energy through space would amount to causation. Cause must work back from an effect. |