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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Knowledge First (and reply)' and 'Sententia on 'De Caelo''

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6 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First
19527 We don't acquire evidence and then derive some knowledge, because evidence IS knowledge [Williamson]
     Full Idea: When we acquire new evidence in perception, we do not first acquire unknown evidence and then somehow base knowledge on it later. Rather, acquiring new is evidence IS acquiring new knowledge.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4)
     A reaction: This makes his point much better than Idea 19526 does.
19528 Knowledge is prior to believing, just as doing is prior to trying to do [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Knowing corresponds to doing, believing to trying. Just as trying is naturally understood in relation to doing, so believing is naturally understood in relation to knowing.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4)
     A reaction: An interesting analogy. You might infer that there can be no concept of 'belief' without the concept of 'knowledge', but we could say that it is 'truth' which is indispensible, and leave out knowledge entirely. Belief is to truth as trying is to doing?
19529 Belief explains justification, and knowledge explains belief, so knowledge explains justification [Williamson]
     Full Idea: If justification is the fundamental epistemic norm of belief, and a belief ought to constitute knowledge, then justification should be understood in terms of knowledge too.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5)
     A reaction: If we are looking for the primitive norm which motivates the whole epistemic game, then I am thinking that truth might well play that role better than knowledge. TW would have to reply that it is the 'grasped truth', rather than the 'theoretical truth'.
19530 A neutral state of experience, between error and knowledge, is not basic; the successful state is basic [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A neutral state covering both perceiving and misperceiving (or remembering and misrembering) is not somehow more basic than perceiving, for what unifies the case of each neutral state is their relation to the successful state.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5-6)
     A reaction: An alternative is Disjunctivism, which denies the existence of a single neutral state, so that there is nothing to unite the two states, and they don't have a dependence relation. Why can't there be a prior family of appearances, some of them successful?
19531 Internalism about mind is an obsolete view, and knowledge-first epistemology develops externalism [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A postulated underlying layer of narrow mental states is a myth, whose plausibility derives from a comfortingly familiar but obsolescent philosophy of mind. Knowledge-first epistemology is a further step in the development of externalism.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6)
     A reaction: Williamson is a real bruiser, isn't he? I don't take internalism about mind to be obsolescent at all, but now I feel so inferior for clinging to such an 'obsolescent' belief. ...But then I cling to Aristotle, who is (no doubt) an obsolete philosopher.
19536 Knowledge-first says your total evidence IS your knowledge [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Knowledge-first equate one's total evidence with one's total knowledge.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.8)
     A reaction: Couldn't lots of evidence which merely had a high probability be combined together to give a state we would call 'knowledge'? Many dubious witnesses confirm the truth, as long as they are independent, and agree.