46 ideas
10354 | Correspondence could be with other beliefs, rather than external facts [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The correspondence theory of truth does not commit one to the view the reality is mind-independent. There is no reason why the 'facts' that correspond to true beliefs might not themselves be beliefs or ideas. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: This seems important, as it is very easy to assume that espousal of correspondence necessarily goes with realism about the external world. It is surprising to think that a full-blown Idealist might espouse the correspondence theory. |
10353 | Tarskians distinguish truth from falsehood by relations between members of sets [Kusch] |
Full Idea: According to the Tarskians we separate out truths from falsehoods by tracing the relations between members of different sets. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.16) |
8525 | Relations need terms, so they must be second-order entities based on first-order tropes [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: Because there cannot be relations without terms, in a meta-physic that makes first-order tropes the terms of all relations, relational tropes must belong to a second, derivative order. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §8) | |
A reaction: The admission that there could be a 'derivative order' may lead to trouble for trope theory. Ostrich Nominalists could say that properties themselves are derivative second-order abstractions from indivisible particulars. Russell makes them first-order. |
8518 | Events are trope-sequences, in which tropes replace one another [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: Events are widely acknowledged to be particulars, but they are plainly not ordinary concrete particulars. They are best viewed as trope-sequences, in which one condition gives way to another. They are changes in which tropes replace one another. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
A reaction: If nothing exists except bundles of tropes, it is worth asking WHY one trope would replace another. Some tropes are active (i.e. they are best described as 'powers'). |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
8513 | Two red cloths are separate instances of redness, because you can dye one of them blue [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: If we have two cloths of the very same shade of redness, we can show there are two cloths by burning one and leaving the other unaffected; we show there are two cases of redness in the same way: dye one blue, leaving the other unaffected. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
A reaction: This has to be one of the basic facts of the problem accepted by everyone. If you dye half of one of the pieces, was the original red therefore one instance or two? Has it become two? How many red tropes are there in a red cloth? |
8514 | Red could only recur in a variety of objects if it was many, which makes them particulars [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: If there are a varied group of red objects, the only element that recurs is the colour. But it must be the colour as a particular (a 'trope') that is involved in the recurrence, for only particulars can be many in the way required for recurrence. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
A reaction: This claim seems to depend on the presupposition that rednesses are countable things, but it is tricky trying to count the number of blue tropes in the sky. |
8522 | Tropes solve the Companionship Difficulty, since the resemblance is only between abstract particulars [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The 'companionship difficulty' cannot arise if the members of the resemblance class are tropes rather than whole concrete particulars. The instances of having a heart, as abstract particulars, are quite different from instances of having a kidney. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
A reaction: The companionship difficulty seems worst if you base your account of properties just on being members of a class. Any talk of resemblance eventually has to talk about 'respects' of resemblance. Is a trope a respect? Is a mode an object? |
8523 | Tropes solve the Imperfect Community problem, as they can only resemble in one respect [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The 'problem of imperfect community' cannot arise where our resemblance sets are sets of tropes. Tropes, by their very nature and mode of differentiation can only resemble in one respect. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
A reaction: You arrive at very different accounts of what resemblance means according to how you express the problem verbally. We can only find a solution through thinking which transcends language. Heresy! |
8524 | Trope theory makes space central to reality, as tropes must have a shape and size [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The metaphysics of abstract particulars gives a central place to space, or space-time, as the frame of the world. ...Tropes are, of their essence, regional, which carries with it the essential presence of shape and size in any trope occurrence. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §7) | |
A reaction: Trope theory has a problem with Aristotle's example (Idea 557) of what happens when white is mixed with white. Do two tropes become one trope if you paint on a second coat of white? How can particulars merge? How can abstractions merge? |
8521 | Nominalism has the problem that without humans nothing would resemble anything else [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The objection to nominalism is its consequence that if there were no human race (or other living things), nothing would be like anything else. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6) | |
A reaction: Anti-realists will be unflustered by this difficulty. Personally it strikes me as obvious that some aspects of resemblance are part of reality which we did not contribute. This I take to be a contingent fact, founded on the existence of natural kinds. |
8515 | Tropes are basic particulars, so concrete particulars are collections of co-located tropes [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: If tropes are basic particulars, then concrete particulars count as dependent realities. They are collections of co-located tropes, depending on these tropes as a fleet does upon its component ships. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §2) | |
A reaction: If I sail my yacht through a fleet, do I become part of it? Presumably trope theory could avoid a bundle view of objects. A bare substratum could be a magnet which attracts tropes. |
8519 | Bundles must be unique, so the Identity of Indiscernibles is a necessity - which it isn't! [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: Each individual is distinct from each other individual, so the bundle account of objects requires each bundle to be different from every other bundle. So the Identity of Indiscernibles must be a necessary truth, which, unfortunately, it is not. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
A reaction: Clearly the Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth (consider just two identical spheres). Location and time must enter into it. Could we not add a further individuation requirement to the necessary existence of a bundle? (Quinton) |
4033 | Two pure spheres in non-absolute space are identical but indiscernible [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth. It fails in possible worlds where there are two identical spheres in a non-absolute space, or worlds without beginning or end where events are exactly cyclically repeated. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5) | |
A reaction: The principle was always very suspect, and these seem nice counterexamples. As so often, epistemology and ontology had become muddled. |
10337 | We can have knowledge without belief, if others credit us with knowledge [Kusch] |
Full Idea: We can have knowledge that p without believing that p. It is enough that others credit us with the knowledge. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: [He is discussing Welbourne 1993] This is an extreme of the communitarian view. |
10357 | Methodological Solipsism assumes all ideas could be derived from one mind [Kusch] |
Full Idea: 'Methodological solipsism' says merely that everyone can conceive of themselves as the only subject. Everyone can construct all referents of their thought and talk out of complexes of their very own experience. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
A reaction: The possibility of this can be denied (e.g. by Putnam 1983, dating back to Wittgenstein). I too would doubt it, though finding a good argument seems a forlorn hope. |
10339 | Foundations seem utterly private, even from oneself at a later time [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Foundationalists place the foundations of knowledge at a point where they are in principle accessible only to the individual knower. They cannot be 'shared' with another person, or with oneself at a later time. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: Kusch is defending an extremely social view of knowledge. Being private to an individual may just he an unfortunate epistemological fact. Being unavailable even to one's later self seems a real problem for foundational certainty. |
10331 | Testimony is reliable if it coheres with evidence for a belief, and with other beliefs [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony must be reliable since its deliveries cohere both with input from other information routes in the formation of single beliefs, and with other types of beliefs in the formation of systems of belief. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: Kusch criticises this view (credited to C.A.J. Coady 1992) as too individualistic , but it sounds to me dead right. I take a major appeal of the coherence account of justification to be its capacity to extend seamlessly out into external testimony. |
10338 | The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: I endorse this idea, which endorses Davidson's slogan on the subject. The key thought is that a 'pure' sensation is uninterpreted, and so cannot justify anything. It is only once it generates a proposition that it can justify. But McDowell 1994. |
10340 | Individualistic coherentism lacks access to all of my beliefs, or critical judgement of my assessment [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Individualistic versions of coherentism assume that a belief is justified if it fits with all, or most, of my contemporaneous beliefs. But who has access to that totality? Who can judge my assessment? From what position could it be judged? | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Though I agree with Kusch on the social aspect of coherence, I don't think these are major criticisms. Who can access, or critically evaluate a society's body of supposedly coherent beliefs? We just do our best. |
10345 | Individual coherentism cannot generate the necessary normativity [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Standard forms of coherentism are unable to account for normativity, because of their common individualism. Normativity cannot be generated within the isolated individual, or in the causal interaction between world and individual mind. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: This thought leads to belief in rationalism and the a priori, not (as Kusch hopes) to the social dimension. How can social normativity get off the ground if there is none of it to be found in individuals? The criteria of coherence seem to be given. |
10350 | Cultures decide causal routes, and they can be critically assessed [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Assessments of causal routes are specific to cultures, and thus not beyond dialectical justification. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This is a good defence of the social and communitarian view against those who are trying to be thoroughly naturalistic and physicalist by relying entirely on causal processes for all explanation, even though I sympathise with such naturalism. |
10343 | Process reliabilism has been called 'virtue epistemology', resting on perception, memory, reason [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Process reliabilism is sometimes subsumed under the label 'virtue epistemology', so that processes are 'epistemically virtuous' if they lead mostly to true beliefs. The 'intellectual virtues' here are perception, memory or reasoning. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
A reaction: I am shocked that 'intellectual virtue' should be hijacked by reliabilists, suggesting that it even applies to a good clock. I like the Aristotelian idea that sound knowledge rests on qualities of character in the knower - including social qualities. |
10341 | Justification depends on the audience and one's social role [Kusch] |
Full Idea: How a claim (about an X-ray) needs to be justified depends on whether one is confronted by a group of laypersons, or of experts, and is prescribed by one's social role. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly right. I cannot think of any absolute criterion for justification which doesn't play straight into the hands of sceptics. Final and certain justification is an incoherent notion. But I am a little more individualistic than Kusch. |
10336 | Powerless people are assumed to be unreliable, even about their own lives [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The powerless in society are not usually taken to be trustworthy witnesses even when it comes to providing information about their own lives. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This is where epistemology shades off into politics and the writings of Foucault. |
10324 | Testimony does not just transmit knowledge between individuals - it actually generates knowledge [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony is not just a means of transmission of complete items of knowledge from and to an individual. Testimony is almost always generative of knowledge. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear how my testimony could fail to be knowledge for me, but become knowledge just because I pass it to you. I might understand what I say better than you did. When fools pool their testimony, presumably not much knowledge results. |
10327 | Some want to reduce testimony to foundations of perceptions, memories and inferences [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Reductionalists about testimony are foundationalists by temperament. ...Their project amounts to justifying our testimonial beliefs in terms of perceptions, memories and inferences. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: Kusch wants to claim that the sharing of testimony is the means by which knowledge is created. My line is something like knowledge being founded on a social coherence, which is an extension of internal individual coherence. |
10329 | Testimony won't reduce to perception, if perception depends on social concepts and categories [Kusch] |
Full Idea: How can we hope to reduce testimony to perception if the way we perceive the world is to a considerable extent shaped by concepts and categories that we have learned from others? | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: To me this sounds like good support for coherentism, the benign circle between my reason, my experience, and the testimony and reason of others. Asking how the circle could get started shows ignorance of biology. |
10330 | A foundation is what is intelligible, hence from a rational source, and tending towards truth [Kusch] |
Full Idea: It can be argued that testimony is non-reductive because it relies on the fact that whatever is intelligible is likely to come from a rational source, and that rational sources, by their very nature, tend towards the truth. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4 n7) | |
A reaction: [He cites Tyler Burge 1993, 1997] If this makes testimony non-reductive, how would one assess whether the testimony is 'intelligible'? |
10334 | Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This is very thought-provoking. A key concept linking the two would be 'respect'. Consider also 'experts'. |
10325 | Vindicating testimony is an expression of individualism [Kusch] |
Full Idea: To believe that testimony needs a general vindication is itself an expression of individualism. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: Kusch is a spokesman for Communitarian Epistemology. Surely we are allowed to identify the criteria for what makes a good witness? Ask a policeman. |
10335 | Myths about lonely genius are based on epistemological individualism [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Many myths about the lonely scientific genius underwrite epistemological individualism. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: They all actually say that they 'stood on the shoulders of giants', and they are invariably immersed in the contemporary researches of teams of like-minded people. How surprised were the really expert contemporaries by Newton, Einstein, Gödel? |
10323 | Communitarian Epistemology says 'knowledge' is a social status granted to groups of people [Kusch] |
Full Idea: I propose 'communitarian epistemology' - claiming first that the term 'knowledge' marks a social status, and is dependent on the existence of communities, and second that this social status is typically granted to groups of people. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I find this very congenial, though Kusch goes a little far when he claims that knowledge is largely created by social groups. He allows that Robinson Crusoe might have knowledge of his island, but can't give a decent account of it. |
10348 | Private justification is justification to imagined other people [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Coming to convince myself is actually to form a pretend communal belief with pretend others, ..which is clearly parasitic on the case where the others are real. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This slightly desperate move is a way for 'communitarian' epistemologists to deal with Robinson Crusoe cases. I think Kusch is right, but it is a bit hard to prove that this is what is 'actually' going on. |
10349 | To be considered 'an individual' is performed by a society [Kusch] |
Full Idea: One cannot even have the social status of 'being an individual' unless it has been conferred on one by a communal performative belief. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This sounds crazy until you think of the mentality of a tenth generation slave in a fully slave-owning society. |
10344 | Our experience may be conceptual, but surely not the world itself? [Kusch] |
Full Idea: I am unconvinced by McDowell's arguments in favour of treating the world as itself conceptual. Granted that our experience is conceptual in quality; it still does not follow that the world itself is conceptual. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
A reaction: I would take Kusch's point to be a given in any discussion of concepts, and McDowell as a non-starter on this one. I am inclined to believe that we do have non-conceptual experiences, but I take them to be epistemologically useless. |
8512 | Abstractions come before the mind by concentrating on a part of what is presented [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: An item is abstract if it is got before the mind by an act of abstraction, that is, by concentrating attention on some, but not all, of what is presented. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1) | |
A reaction: I think this point is incredibly important. Pure Fregean semantics tries to leave out the psychological component, and yet all the problems in semantics concern various sorts of abstraction. Imagination is the focus of the whole operation. |
10358 | Often socialising people is the only way to persuade them [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Often we can convince members of other cultures only by socializing them into our culture. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
A reaction: This looks both true and interesting, and is good support for Kusch's communitarian epistemology. What actually persuades certainly doesn't have to be reasons, and may be almost entirely social. |
10333 | Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This thought offers an account of epistemology which could fit in with communitarian political views. See the ideas of Martin Kusch in this database. |
10351 | Natural kinds are social institutions [Kusch] |
Full Idea: Natural kinds are social institutions. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: I can see what he means, but I take this to be deeply wrong. A clarification of what exactly is meant by a 'natural kind' is needed before we can make any progress with this one. Is a village a natural kind? Or a poodle? Or a shoal? |
8517 | Causal conditions are particular abstract instances of properties, which makes them tropes [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: The conditions in causal statements are usually particular cases of properties. A collapse results from the weakness of this cable (not any other). This is specific to a time and place; it is an abstract particular. It is, in short, a trope. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
A reaction: The fan of universals could counter this by saying that the collapse results from this unique combination of universals. Resemblance nominalist can equally build an account on the coincidence of certain types of concrete particulars. |
8516 | Davidson can't explain causation entirely by events, because conditions are also involved [Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: Not all singular causal statements are of Davidson's event-event type. Many involve conditions, so there are condition-event (weakness/collapse), event-condition (explosion/movement), and condition-condition (hot/warming) causal connections. | |
From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3) | |
A reaction: Fans of Davidson need to reduce conditions to events. The problem of individuation keeps raising its head. Davidson makes it depend on description. Kim looks good, because events, and presumably conditions, reduce to something small and precise. |
10332 | Omniscience is incoherent, since knowledge is a social concept [Kusch] |
Full Idea: The very idea of omniscience is dubious, at least for the communitarian epistemologist, since knowing is a social state, and knowledge is a social status, needing a position in a social network. | |
From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
A reaction: A nice test case. Would an omniscient mind have evidence for its beliefs? Would it continually check for coherence? Is it open to criticism? Does it even entertain the possibility of error? Could another 'omniscient' mind challenge it? |