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4 ideas
20219 | True opinions only become really valuable when they are tied down by reasons [Plato] |
Full Idea: True opinions are a fine thing and all they do is good, …but they escape from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until one ties them down by (giving) an account of the reason why. | |
From: Plato (Meno [c.385 BCE], 98a3) | |
A reaction: This gives justification the role of guarantee, stabilising and securing true beliefs (rather than triggering some new thing called 'knowledge'). |
3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The action of thought by which one believes a thing, being different from that by which one knows that one believes it, they often exist the one without the other. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) |
1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes' procedure for treating values (accepting normal conventions when faced with uncertainty) is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.73 |
3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
Full Idea: While I decided to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so certain that the most extravagant scepticism could never shake it. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) |