Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Posthumous notes', 'What is innate and why' and 'Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues'

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2 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 1. Knowledge
It is acceptable to say a supermarket door 'knows' someone is approaching [Sosa]
     Full Idea: I am quite flexible on epistemic terminology, and am even willing to grant that a supermarket door can 'know' that someone is approaching.
     From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6)
     A reaction: I take this amazing admission to be a hallmark of externalism. Sosa must extend this to thermostats. So flowers know the sun has come out. This is knowledge without belief. Could the door ever be 'wrong'?
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism
Transcendental philosophy is the subject becoming the originator of unified reality [Kant]
     Full Idea: Transcendental philosophy is the act of consciousness whereby the subject becomes the originator of itself and, thereby, of the whole object of technical-practical and moral-practical reason in one system - ordering all things in God
     From: Immanuel Kant (Posthumous notes [1799], 21:78, p.245), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06 App
     A reaction: This is evidently Kant's last word on the matter (c.1799), and Moore says he was drifting close to Fichte's idealism, in which reality is actually (sort of) created by our own minds. Disappointing! God's role here is unclear.