Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P, Mary Anne Warren and Peter (Pyotr) Kropotkin

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8 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding

19542	It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24)
	A reaction: This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own?

19543	To grasp understanding, we should be more explicit about what needs to be known [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: An essential prerequisite for useful discussion of the relation between knowledge and understanding is systematic explicitness about what is to be known or understood.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.25)
	A reaction: This is better. I say what needs to be known for understanding is the essence of the item under discussion (my PhD thesis!). Obviously understanding needs some knowledge, but I take it that epistemology should be understanding-first. That is the main aim.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First

19541	Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17)
	A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked.

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues

19540	Don't confuse justified belief with justified believers [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: Much theorizing about justification conflates issues of justified belief with issues of justified/blameless believers.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.12)
	A reaction: [They cite Kent Bach 1985] Presumably the only thing that really justifies a belief is the truth, or the actual facts. You could then say 'p is a justified belief, though no one actually believes it'. E.g. the number of stars is odd.

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / b. Need for justification

19539	If knowledge is unanalysable, that makes justification more important [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: If knowledge is indeed unanalyzable, that could be seen as a liberation of justification to assume importance in its own right.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.11)
	A reaction: [They cite Kvanvig 2003:192 and Greco 2010:9-] See Scruton's Idea 3897. I suspect that we should just give up discussing 'knowledge', which is a woolly and uninformative term, and focus on where the real epistemological action is.

16. Persons / A. Concept of a Person / 1. Existence of Persons

20618	Persons must be conscious, reasoning, motivated, communicative, self-aware [Warren, by Tuckness/Wolf]
	Full Idea: Suggested characteristics of personhood: consciousness (esp. of pain); reasoning and problem solving; self-motivated activity; varied communication on many topics; self-concepts and self-awareness.
	From: report of Mary Anne Warren (On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion [1973], p.55) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 8 'Standing'
	A reaction: [a 'famous' article] A number of non-human animals come very close to passing these tests. I suspect the complex communication is only in there to disqualify them from getting the full certificate. (But she wrote on animal rights).

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics

19538	Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion (where 'mammals' contains 'cats') [Dougherty/Rysiew]
	Full Idea: Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion. 'Cat' entails 'mammal' because the cats are a subset of the mammals.
	From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.10)
	A reaction: I would have thought that this was only one type of entailment. 'Travelling to Iceland entails flying'. Travelling includes flying, the reverse of cats/mammals, to a very complex set-theoretic account is needed. Interesting.

25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 1. Grounds of equality

20486	Only liberty, equality and sympathy can stand up to anti-social people [Kropotkin]
	Full Idea: Liberty, equality and practical human sympathy are the only effective barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain among us.
	From: Peter (Pyotr) Kropotkin (Law and Authority [1886], 1 'Anarchism'), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev)
	A reaction: One might state it more succinctly as 'only the social can oppose the anti-social'. The dominance in society of essentially anti-social people seems to have become a major political fact in 2017, in the UK and the USA.