12801
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Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
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A reaction:
I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!
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12800
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Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
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A reaction:
I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.
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12802
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We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
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Full Idea:
It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
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A reaction:
[See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.
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23266
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The spirit in the soul wants freedom, power and honour [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The spirited part of the soul is desiderative of freedom, victory, power, authority, reputation, and honour.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
This is the concept of 'thumos' [spirit], taken straight from Plato's tripartite account of the soul, in 'Republic'. Note that it includes a desire for freedom (in an age of slavery).
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23220
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The brain contains memory and reason, and is the source of sensation and decision [Galen]
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Full Idea:
The brain is the principal organ of the psychical members. For within the brain is seated memory, reason and intellect, and from the brain is distributed the power, sensation and voluntary motion.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170]), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1
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A reaction:
[not sure of ref] Interesting that he assigns the whole of mind to the brain, and not just some aspect of it. He had done experiments. Understanding the role of the brain was amazingly slow. Impeded by religion, I guess.
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23265
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The rational part of the soul is the desire for truth, understanding and recollection [Galen]
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Full Idea:
That part of the soul which we call rational is desiderative: …it desires truth, knowledge, learning, understanding, and recollection - in short, all the good things.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.2.772)
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A reaction:
Truth is no surprise, but recollection is. Note the separation of knowledge from understanding. This is a very good characterisation of rationality. For the Greeks it has a moral dimension, of wanting what is good.
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7453
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Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking]
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Full Idea:
Galen ran medicine on the principle of the mean; afflictions must be treated by contraries; hot diseases deserve cold medicine and moist illnesses want drying agents. (Paracelsus rebelled, treating through similarity).
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From:
report of Galen (On Medical Experience [c.169]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.5
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A reaction:
This must be inherited from Aristotle, with the aim of virtue for the body, as Aristotle wanted virtue for the psuché. In some areas Galen is probably right, that natural balance is the aim, as in bodily temperature control.
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6030
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Each part of the soul has its virtue - pleasure for appetite, success for competition, and rectitude for reason [Galen]
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Full Idea:
We have by nature these three appropriate relationships, corresponding to each form of the soul's parts - to pleasure because of the appetitive part, to success because of the competitive part, and to rectitude because of the rational part.
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From:
Galen (On Hippocrates and Plato [c.170], 5.5.8)
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A reaction:
This is a nice combination of Plato's tripartite theory of soul (in 'Republic') and Aristotle's derivation of virtues from functions. Presumably, though, reason should master the other two, and there is nothing in Galen's idea to explain this.
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22251
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Liberalism may fail because it neglects the shared nature of what we pursue and protect [Haldane]
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Full Idea:
I am interested in the claim that liberalism fails inasmuch as it neglects, and cannot accommodate, the fact that some or all of the goods we pursue, and which a system of rights is concerned to protect, are goods possessed in common.
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From:
John Haldane (The Individual, the State, and the Common Good [1996], III)
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A reaction:
It depends how individualistic we take liberalism to be. Extreme individualism (Nozick) strikes me as crazy. If 'we' erect a statue to some dubious politicians, it might be presented as a common good, but actually be despised by many.
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23268
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We execute irredeemable people, to protect ourselves, as a deterrent, and ending a bad life [Galen]
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Full Idea:
We kill the irredeemably wicked, for three reasons: that they may no longer harm us; as a deterrent to others like them; and because it is actually better from their own point of view to die, when their souls are so damaged they cannot be improved.
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From:
Galen (The soul's dependence on the body [c.170], Kiv.11.816)
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A reaction:
The third one sounds like a dubious rationalisation, given that the prisoner probably disagrees. Nowadays we are not so quick to judge someone as irredeemable. The first one works when they run wild, but not after their capture.
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