Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Steven Pinker, Wilfrid Sellars and Agrippa

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22 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / c. Philosophy as generalisation
21829 Philosophy aims to understand how things (broadly understood) hang together (broadly understood) [Sellars]
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 9. Limits of Reason
1813 All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
1811 Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
1815 Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
1812 All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
6550 Reduction requires that an object's properties consist of its constituents' properties and relations [Sellars]
7508 Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
7510 Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
7513 Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / a. Agrippa's trilemma
8850 Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M]
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / c. Empirical foundations
8793 If observation is knowledge, it is not just an experience; it is a justification in the space of reasons [Sellars]
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / f. Foundationalism critique
8792 Observations like 'this is green' presuppose truths about what is a reliable symptom of what [Sellars]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
1814 Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
7509 Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
7511 Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
7512 There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / a. Physicalism critique
6382 The 'grain problem' says physical objects are granular, where sensations appear not to be [Sellars, by Polger]
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / f. Theory theory of concepts
8791 The concept of 'green' involves a battery of other concepts [Sellars]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
7505 Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
7516 In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
7515 All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker]
7514 Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker]