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Single Idea 19107

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 3. Fallibilism ]

Full Idea

Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way.

Gist of Idea

Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog

Source

Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4

Book Ref

'New Pragmatists', ed/tr. Misak,Cheryl [OUP 2009], p.83


A Reaction

[I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from]


The 13 ideas with the same theme [beliefs can counts as knowledge even if they are not certain]:

Knowledge by senses is less certain than that by intuition or reason, but it is still knowledge [Locke]
Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce]
Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce]
Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce]
No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey]
The most obvious beliefs are not infallible, as other obvious beliefs may conflict [Russell]
To say S knows P, but cannot eliminate not-P, sounds like a contradiction [Lewis]
If senses are fallible, then being open to correction is an epistemological virtue [Dancy,J]
Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner]
Fallibilism is consistent with dogmatism or scepticism, and is not alternative to them [Dougherty]
It is best to see the fallibility in the reasons, rather than in the agents or the knowledge [Dougherty]
We can't normally say that we know something 'but it might be false' [Dougherty]
Indefeasibility does not imply infallibility [Grundmann]