21 ideas
| 4262 | If the only aim was consistent beliefs then new evidence and experiments would be irrelevant [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: If mere consistency is our aim in achieving a coherent set of beliefs, then new evidence and experiments are irrelevant. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (The Internalist Conception of Justification [1980], §VIII) | |
| A reaction: An important reminder. What epistemic duty requires us to attend to anomalous observations, instead of sweeping them under the carpet? |
| 19323 | 'Snow is white' depends on meaning; whether snow is white depends on snow [Etchemendy] |
| Full Idea: The difference between (a) snow is white, and (b) 'snow is white' true is that the first makes a claim that only depends on the colour of snow, while the second depends both on the colour of snow and the meaning of the sentence 'snow is white'. | |
| From: John Etchemendy (Tarski on Truth and Logical Consequence [1988], p.61), quoted by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.7 | |
| A reaction: This is a helpful first step for those who have reached screaming point by being continually offered this apparently vacuous equivalence. This sentence works well if that stuff is a particular colour. |
| 19137 | We can get a substantive account of Tarski's truth by adding primitive 'true' to the object language [Etchemendy] |
| Full Idea: Getting from a Tarskian definition of truth to a substantive account of the semantic properties of the object language may involve as little as the reintroduction of a primitive notion of truth. | |
| From: John Etchemendy (Tarski on Truth and Logical Consequence [1988], p.60), quoted by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 1 | |
| A reaction: This is, I think, the first stage in modern developments of axiomatic truth theories. The first problem would be to make sure you haven't reintroduced the Liar Paradox. You need axioms to give behaviour to the 'true' predicate. |
| 14181 | Validity is where either the situation or the interpretation blocks true premises and false conclusion [Etchemendy, by Read] |
| Full Idea: The Representational account of validity says an argument is valid if there is no situation where the premises are true and the conclusion false. The Interpretation account says the premises are true and conclusion false under no interpretations. | |
| From: report of John Etchemendy (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1999]) by Stephen Read - Formal and Material Consequence 'Inval' | |
| A reaction: My immediate instinct is to want logic to be about situations, rather than interpretations. Situations are more about thought, where interpretations are more about language. I think our account of logic should have some applicability to animals. |
| 14180 | Etchemendy says fix the situation and vary the interpretation, or fix interpretations with varying situations [Etchemendy, by Read] |
| Full Idea: In Etchemendy's Interpretational Semantics (perhaps better called 'Substitutional') we keep the situation fixed and vary the interpretation; in Representational Semantics ('Modal'?) we keep interpretations fixed but consider varying situations. | |
| From: report of John Etchemendy (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1999]) by Stephen Read - Formal and Material Consequence 'Inval' | |
| A reaction: [compressed] These are semantic strategies for interpreting logic, so they are two ways you might go about assessing an argument. |
| 4045 | Children may have three innate principles which enable them to learn to count [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: It has been proposed (on the basis of observations) that young children have three innate principles of counting - one-to-one correspondence of number to item, stable order for numbers, and cardinality (which labels the nth item counted). | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.60) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea of observed patterns as central (which is the one-to-one principle). But the other two principles are plausible, and show why pure empiricism won't work. |
| 4044 | Rat behaviour reveals a considerable ability to count [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Rats can determine the number of times they have pressed a lever up to at least twenty-four presses,…and can consistently turn down the fifth tunnel on the left in a maze. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.58) | |
| A reaction: This seems to encourage an empirical view of maths (pattern recognition?) rather than a Platonic one. Or numbers are innate in rat brains? |
| 4048 | Infant brains appear to have inbuilt ontological categories [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Infant behaviour implies inbuilt ontological categories of thing, place, event, path, action, sound, manner, amount and number. ...There is an algebra of relationships between them. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.109) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. We would expect the categories in infant brains to have instrumental value, but we don't have to accept them as true. Adults (even Aristotle) are big infants. |
| 4043 | Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: An elephant may be fully represented by nine primitive shapes ('geons'), but it may require as few as three geons in appropriate relations to be correctly identified. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.7) | |
| A reaction: Encouraging the idea of the mind as a maker of maps and models |
| 4049 | The way in which colour experiences are evoked is physically odd and unpredictable [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: A unique yellow experience may be evoked with monochrome light of 580nm, or a mixture of 540nm and 670nm. ..Our interpretation of colour experience is a highly idiosyncratic artefact of our visual system. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.117) | |
| A reaction: This confirms what I have always thought - that colour (as qualia) is strictly a feature of minds, not of the world. |
| 4047 | Gestalt psychology proposes inbuilt proximity, similarity, smoothness and closure principles [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Gestalt psychology claims that there are at least four unlearned factors in perceptual grouping - the principles of proximity (close things), of similarity, of good continuation (extending lines in a smooth course), and closure (which completes figures). | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Phil Applications of Cognitive Science [1993], p.103) | |
| A reaction: This offers a bridge between Hume's associationism and rationalist claims of innate ideas |
| 8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
| 6871 | We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2) | |
| A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember. |
| 6872 | Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind. |
| 6874 | Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4) | |
| A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem. |
| 8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
| 6873 | Coherent justification seems to require retrieving all our beliefs simultaneously [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: The problem of Concurrent Retrieval is a problem for internalism, notably coherentism, because an agent could ascertain coherence of her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds neat, but not very convincing. Goldman is relying on scepticism about short-term memory, but all belief and knowledge will collapse if we go down that road. We couldn't do simple arithmetic if Goldman's point were right. |
| 8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
| 6875 | Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §6) | |
| A reaction: As an argument for externalism this seems bogus. I am not sure that truth is either 'internal' or 'external'. How could the truth of 3+2=5 be external? Facts are mostly external, but I take truth to be a relation between internal and external. |
| 8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
| 9381 | If some inferences are needed to fix meaning, but we don't know which, they are all relevant [Fodor/Lepore, by Boghossian] |
| Full Idea: The Master Argument for linguistic holism is: Some of an expression's inferences are relevant to fixing its meaning; there is no way to distinguish the inferences that are constitutive (from Quine); so all inferences are relevant to fixing meaning. | |
| From: report of J Fodor / E Lepore (Holism: a Shopper's Guide [1993], §III) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered | |
| A reaction: This would only be if you thought that the pattern of inferences is what fixes the meanings, but how can you derive inferences before you have meanings? The underlying language of thought generates the inferences? Meanings are involved! |