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Ideas for 'The Elm and the Expert', 'Comments on a Certain Broadsheet' and 'Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong'

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12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
What experience could prove 'If a=c and b=c then a=b'? [Descartes]
     Full Idea: Please tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming some common notion to the effect that 'things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other'.
     From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.366)
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
Associationism can't explain how truth is preserved [Fodor]
     Full Idea: The essential problem is to explain how thinking manages reliably to preserve truth; and Associationism, as Kant rightly pointed out to Hume, hasn't the resources to do so.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1)
     A reaction: One might be able to give an associationist account of truth-preservation if one became a bit more externalist about it, so that the normal association patterns track their connections with the external world.