display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 20188 | Modern epistemology is too atomistic, and neglects understanding [Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: There are complaints that contemporary epistemology is too atomistic, and that the value of understanding has been neglected. | |
| From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], I 2) | |
| A reaction: This is because of the excessive influence of logic in contemporary analytic philosophy, which has to reduce knowledge to K(Fa), rather than placing it in a human context. |
| 20223 | Epistemology is excessively atomic, by focusing on justification instead of understanding [Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: The present obsession with justification and the neglect of understanding has resulted in a feature of epistemology already criticised by several epistemologists: its atomism. | |
| From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], III 2.2) | |
| A reaction: All analytic philosophy has become excessively atomic, because it relies too heavily on logic for its grounding and rigour. There are other sorts of rigour, such as AI, peer review, programming. Or rigour is an idle dream. |
| 20217 | Truth is valuable, but someone knowing the truth is more valuable [Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: Of course we value the truth, but the value we place on knowledge is more than the value of the truth we thereby acquire. …It also involves a valuabe relation between the knower and the truth. | |
| From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], III 1) | |
| A reaction: Hard to assess this. I take truth to be a successful relationship between a mind and a fact. Knowledge needs something extra, to avoid lucky true beliefs. Does a truth acquire greater and greater value as more people come to know it? Doubtful. |
| 20191 | Some beliefs are fairly voluntary, and others are not at all so [Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: My position is that beliefs, like acts, arrange themselves on a continuum of degrees of voluntariness, ranging from quite a bit to none at all. | |
| From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], I 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm sure we have no idea how we came to hold many of our beliefs, and if we see a cat, nothing seems to intervene between the seeing and the believing. But if you adopt a religion, believing its full creed is a big subsequent effort. |
| 20222 | Knowledge either aims at a quantity of truths, or a quality of understanding of truths [Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: Getting knowledge can be a matter either of reaching more truths or of gaining understanding of truths already believed. So it may be a way of increasing either the quality of true belief (cognitive contact with reality) or the quantity. | |
| From: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (Virtues of the Mind [1996], III 2.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how one would increase understanding of currently believed truths if it didn't involve adding some new truths to the collection. There is only the discovery of connections or structures, but those are new facts. |