Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Fixation of Belief', 'Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics' and 'The Inessential Indexical'

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2 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 4. Aims of Reason
Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7)
     A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well.
2. Reason / E. Argument / 1. Argument
A 'teepee' argument has several mutually supporting planks to it [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: In a 'teepee' argument, a number of argumentative planks intersupport each other. No plank is sufficiently strong to establish the position, but each lends credibility to the others because there is the appearance of a unified phenomenon.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.5)
     A reaction: To attack it, they say, you have to identify the separate planks of the argument. It is a moot point whether the teepee might be so imprecise that it is better described as 'coherence'. There is a background support, as well as the planks.