Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Persons, Character and Morality' and 'Apriority as an Evaluative Notion'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
Chrysippus said the uncaused is non-existent [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus said that the uncaused is altogether non-existent.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c
     A reaction: The difficulty is to see what empirical basis there can be for such a claim, or what argument of any kind other than an intuition. Induction is the obvious answer, but Hume teaches us scepticism about any claim that 'there can be no exceptions'.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 4. Circularity
Maybe reasonableness requires circular justifications - that is one coherentist view [Field,H]
     Full Idea: It is not out of the question to hold that without circular justifications there is no reasonableness at all. That is the view of a certain kind of coherence theorist.
     From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 2)
     A reaction: This nicely captures a gut feeling I have had for a long time. Being now thoroughly converted to coherentism, I am drawn to the idea - like a moth to a flame. But how do we distinguish cuddly circularity from its cruel and vicious cousin?