green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand these ideas
| 3695 | Philosophy is a priori if it is anything |
| Full Idea: My conviction is that philosophy is a priori if it is anything. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], Pref) | |||
| A reaction: How about knowledge of a posteriori necessities, such as the length of a metre, known by observation of the standard metre in Paris? |
| 3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning |
| Full Idea: If one never in fact grasps any necessary connections between anything, it is hard to see what reasoning could possible amount to. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.3) |
| 3700 | Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence |
| Full Idea: The epistemic authority of coherence cannot itself be established by appeal to coherence. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7 n50) | |||
| A reaction: The standard approach amongs modern philosophers (following, I think, Kripke) is to insist on 'intuition' as basic, despite all its problems. I have no better suggestion. |
| 3697 | The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity |
| Full Idea: While necessity and possibility are interdefinable concepts, it is the idea of a possible world or situation which is intuitively primary. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.3) |
| 3704 | Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification |
| Full Idea: Moderate rationalism preserves a priori justification, but rejects the idea that it is infallible. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) |
| 3707 | Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight |
| Full Idea: Criteria or rules do not somehow apply to themselves. They must be judged by the sort of rational insight or intuition that the rationalist is advocating. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §5.2) |
| 3706 | A priori justification can vary in degree |
| Full Idea: A priori justification can vary in degree. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.5) | |||
| A reaction: This idea, which I trace back at least to Russell, seems to me one of breakthrough ideas in modern thought. It means that a priori knowledge can be reconnected with a posteriori knowledge. |
| 3696 | A priori justification requires understanding but no experience |
| Full Idea: A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2) | |||
| A reaction: Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori. |
| 3703 | You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up |
| Full Idea: Moderate empiricists try unsuccessfully to explain a priori justification by means of analyticity, and radical empiricist attempts to dispense with a priori justification end in nearly total scepticism. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) | |||
| A reaction: My working theory is neither of the above. Because we can abstract from the physical world, we can directly see/experience generalised (and even necessary) truths about it. |
| 3699 | The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements |
| Full Idea: The attempt to prove physical statements on the basis of sensory evidence is defeated by the problem of induction. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.6) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's use of the word 'prove', which would be a pretty forlorn hope. Insofar as experience proves anything, fully sensing a chair proves its existence. |
| 3701 | Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs |
| Full Idea: An externalist theory of epistemic justification or warrant need not involve the possession by the believer of anything like a reason for thinking that their belief is true. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |||
| A reaction: That is the problem with externalism. If the believer does not have a reason, then why would they believe? Externalists are interesting on justification, but daft about belief. Why do I believe I know something, when I can't recall how I learnt it? |
| 3702 | Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism |
| Full Idea: If externalism is the final story, we have no reason to think that any of our beliefs are true, which amounts to a very strong and intuitively implausible version of scepticism. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |||
| A reaction: A very good point. I may, like a cat, know many things, with good external support, but as soon as I ask sceptical questions, I sink without trace if I lack internal reasons. |
| 3709 | Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred |
| Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7) |
| 3708 | All thought represents either properties or indexicals |
| Full Idea: I assume that the contents of thought can be accounted for by appeal to just two general sorts of ingredient - properties (including relations) and indexicals. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §6.7) | |||
| A reaction: I don't accept that relations are a type of properties. Since he does not include objects or substances, I take it that he considers objects to be bundles of properties. |
| 3698 | Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief |
| Full Idea: The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation would be better described as the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning and belief. | |||
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.5) | |||
| A reaction: Not necessarily. It is not incoherent to believe that the target people have a coherent and stable system of meaning and belief, but finding its translation indeterminate because it is holistic, and rooted in a way of life. |