Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary' and 'Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues'

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2 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 1. On Reason
When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato]
     Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e)
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
We can't attain a coherent system by lopping off any beliefs that won't fit [Sosa]
     Full Idea: Coherence involves the logical, explanatory and probabilistic relations among one's beliefs, but it could not do to attain a tightly iterrelated system by lopping off whatever beliefs refuse to fit.
     From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.4)
     A reaction: This is clearly right, so the coherentist has to distinguish between lopping off a belief because it is inconvenient (fundamentalists rejecting textual contradictions), and lopping it off because it is wrong (chemists rejecting phlogiston).