Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Theaetetus', 'Four Decades of Scientific Explanation' and 'Structures and Structuralism in Phil of Maths'

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2 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / a. Foundationalism

2081	Maybe primary elements can be named, but not receive a rational account [Plato]
	Full Idea: Maybe the primary elements of which things are composed are not susceptible to rational accounts. Each of them taken by itself can only be named, but nothing further can be said about it.
	From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 201e)
	A reaction: This still seems to be more or less the central issue in philosophy - which things should be treated as 'primitive', and which other things are analysed and explained using the primitive tools?

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / b. Pro-coherentism

2088	A rational account of a wagon would mean knowledge of its hundred parts [Plato]
	Full Idea: In the case of a wagon, we may only have correct belief, but someone who is able to explain what it is by going through its hundred parts has got hold of a rational account.
	From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 207b)
	A reaction: A wonderful example. In science, you know smoking correlates with cancer, but you only know it when you know the mechanism, the causal structure. This may be a general truth.