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Ideas for 'Causation', 'Vagueness and Contradiction' and 'What is Knowledge-First Epistemology?'

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
Don't confuse justified belief with justified believers [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: Much theorizing about justification conflates issues of justified belief with issues of justified/blameless believers.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.12)
     A reaction: [They cite Kent Bach 1985] Presumably the only thing that really justifies a belief is the truth, or the actual facts. You could then say 'p is a justified belief, though no one actually believes it'. E.g. the number of stars is odd.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / b. Need for justification
If knowledge is unanalysable, that makes justification more important [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: If knowledge is indeed unanalyzable, that could be seen as a liberation of justification to assume importance in its own right.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.11)
     A reaction: [They cite Kvanvig 2003:192 and Greco 2010:9-] See Scruton's Idea 3897. I suspect that we should just give up discussing 'knowledge', which is a woolly and uninformative term, and focus on where the real epistemological action is.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / b. Pro-coherentism
Bayesians build near-certainty from lots of reasonably probable beliefs [Sorensen]
     Full Idea: Bayesians demonstrate that a self-correcting agent can build an imposing edifice of near-certain knowledge from numerous beliefs that are only slightly more probable than not.
     From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.1)
     A reaction: This strikes me as highly significant for the coherence account of justification, even if one is sceptical about the arithmetical approach to belief of Bayesianism. It seems obvious that lots of quite likely facts build towards certainty, Watson.
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 3. Illusion Scepticism
Illusions are not a reason for skepticism, but a source of interesting scientific information [Sorensen]
     Full Idea: Philosophers tend to associate illusions with skepticism. But since illusions are signs of modular construction, they are actually reason for scientific hope. Illusions have been very useful in helping us to understand vision.
     From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 1.4)
     A reaction: This is a nice reversal of the usual view. If I see double, it reveals to me that my eyes are not aligned properly. Anyone led to scepticism by illusions should pay more attention to themselves, and less to the reality they hope to know directly.