7 ideas
| 8833 | Why should we prefer coherent beliefs? [Klein,P] |
| Full Idea: A key question for a coherentist is, why should he or she adopt a coherent set of beliefs rather than an incoherent set? | |
| From: Peter Klein (Infinitism solution to regress problem [2005], 'Step 1') | |
| A reaction: The point of the question is that the coherentist may have to revert to other criteria in answering it. One could equally ask, why should I believe in tables just because I vividly experience them? Or, why believe 2+2=4, just because it is obvious? |
| 8834 | Infinitism avoids a regress, circularity or arbitrariness, by saying warrant just increases [Klein,P] |
| Full Idea: Infinitism can solve the regress problem, because it endorses a warrant-emergent form of reasoning in which warrant increases as the series of reasons lengthens. The theory can avoid both circularity and arbitrariness. | |
| From: Peter Klein (Infinitism solution to regress problem [2005], 'Step 2') | |
| A reaction: It nicely avoids arbitrariness by offering a reason for absolutely every belief. I think the way to go may to combine individual Infinitism with a social account of where to set the bar of acceptable justification. |
| 8838 | If justification is endless, no link in the chain is ultimately justified [Ginet on Klein,P] |
| Full Idea: An endless chain of inferential justifications can never ultimately explain why any link in the chain is justified. | |
| From: comment on Peter Klein (Infinitism solution to regress problem [2005]) by Carl Ginet - Infinitism not solution to regress problem p.148 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a mere yearning for foundations. I don't see sense-experience or the natural light of human reason (or the word of God, for that matter) as in any way 'ultimate'. It's all evidence to be evaluated. |
| 8839 | Reasons acquire warrant through being part of a lengthening series [Klein,P] |
| Full Idea: The infinitist holds that finding a reason, and then another reason for that reason, places it at the beginning of a series where each gains warrant as part of the series. ..Rational credibility increases as the series lengthens. | |
| From: Peter Klein (Infinitism solution to regress problem [2005], p.137) | |
| A reaction: A striking problem here for Klein is the status of the first reason, prior to it being supported by a series. Surprisingly, it seems that it would not yet be a justification. Coherence accounts have the same problem, if coherence is the only criterion. |
| 20739 | Levinas took 'first philosophy' to begin with seeing the vulnerable faces of others [Levinas, by Aho] |
| Full Idea: Levinas forwarded a notion of 'ethics as first philosophy' that begins from the concete exposure and openness to 'the face' of the other, an experience of vulnerability and suffering that undercuts our ordinary egoistic and objectifying tendencies. | |
| From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 1 'Existentialism' | |
| A reaction: Iris Murdoch speaks of seeing a falcon in flight as having a similar effect of diminishing the ego. If the main focus is on potential 'suffering' does this eventually cash out as utilitarianism? I bet not! |
| 20239 | Unlike us, the early Greeks thought envy was a good thing, and hope a bad thing [Hesiod, by Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Hesiod reckons envy among the effects of the good and benevolent Eris, and there was nothing offensive in according envy to the gods. ...Likewise the Greeks were different from us in their evaluation of hope: one felt it to be blind and malicious. | |
| From: report of Hesiod (works [c.700 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Dawn (Daybreak) 038 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would be understandable envy, and unreasonable hope. Ridiculous envy can't possibly be good, and modest and sensible hope can't possibly be bad. I suspect he wants to exaggerate the relativism. |
| 20445 | Levinas says Marxism is the replacement of individualist ethics, by solidarity and sociality [Levinas, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: For Levinas, Marxism is the absorption of the ethical in the socioeconomic, and so it is the disappearance of the face-to-face relation and the privileging of relations of solidarity and anonymous sociality, which he calls 'socialism'. | |
| From: report of Emmanuel Levinas (works [1956]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 1 | |
| A reaction: Startling, if you are not used to this sort of thing. If you are in trouble, I should help you, not because you are you, or a human being, but because you are a member of my group? So what about the Good Samaritan? Or solidarity with humanity? Animals? |