3 ideas
| 4254 | Externalist accounts of knowledge do not require the traditional sort of justification [Kornblith] |
| Full Idea: What is distinctive about externalist accounts of knowledge is that they do not require justification, at least in the traditional sense. | |
| From: Hilary Kornblith (Internalism and Externalism: a History [2001], p.2) | |
| A reaction: At least this gives animals the chance to know things, but I suspect that they never get beyond true beliefs. I'm sure humans have 'better' knowledge than animals. |
| 3102 | Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee] |
| Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?' | |
| From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |