10 ideas
| 1813 | All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Twelfth mode: all reasoning leads on to further reasoning, and this process goes on forever. | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
| 1811 | Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Fifteenth mode: proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved. | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
| 1815 | Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Fourteenth mode: reasoning requires arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses. | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
| 1812 | All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Eleventh mode: all topics of discussion are full of uncertainty and contradiction. | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
| 19701 | Fallibilism is consistent with dogmatism or scepticism, and is not alternative to them [Dougherty] |
| Full Idea: There has been a tendency to treat fallibilism as an alternative to either dogmatism or scepticism. ...But it is much better to think of fallibilism as consistent with either dogmatism or skepticism. | |
| From: Trent Dougherty (Fallibilism [2011], 'Closure') | |
| A reaction: It seems perfectly reasonably to describe oneself as a 'fallibilist dogmatist' (perhaps from the Pope?), or a 'fallibilist sceptic' (perhaps from Peter Unger?), so this idea sounds correct. |
| 19700 | It is best to see the fallibility in the reasons, rather than in the agents or the knowledge [Dougherty] |
| Full Idea: It seems best to take fallible reasons as the basic notion of fallibilism. So fallible knowers are agents who know what they know on the basis of fallible reasons. Fallible knowledge will be knowledge on basis of fallible reasons. | |
| From: Trent Dougherty (Fallibilism [2011], 'Cognates') | |
| A reaction: This is because an ideal knower would be compelled by the evidence, so if fallibilism is universal it must reside in the evidence and not in the knower (bottom p.131). |
| 19702 | We can't normally say that we know something 'but it might be false' [Dougherty] |
| Full Idea: It will ordinarily be conversationally inappropriate to say 'I know that p, but p might be false' even if it is true, since this would mislead an interlocutor to infer that that possibility was an epistemically significant one. | |
| From: Trent Dougherty (Fallibilism [2011], 'Epistemic') | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply hypocrisy when a fallibilist philosopher claims (in non-philosophical company) to know something. Fair enough. Philosophers are in a permanent state of hypocrisy about what they are really thinking. That's the fun of it. |
| 8850 | Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M] |
| Full Idea: Agrippa's Trilemma offers three possible outcomes for a regress of justification: the chain goes on for ever (infinite); or the chain stops at an unjustified proposition (arbitrary); or the chain eventually includes the original proposition (circular). | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60], §2) by Michael Williams - Without Immediate Justification §2 | |
| A reaction: This summarises Ideas 1911, 1913 and 1914. Agrippa's Trilemma is now a standard starting point for modern discussions of foundations. Personally I reject 2, and am torn between 1 (+ social consensus) and 3 (with a benign, coherent circle). |
| 1814 | Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Thirteenth mode: everything is always perceived in relation to something else. | |
| From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10 |
| 20239 | Unlike us, the early Greeks thought envy was a good thing, and hope a bad thing [Hesiod, by Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Hesiod reckons envy among the effects of the good and benevolent Eris, and there was nothing offensive in according envy to the gods. ...Likewise the Greeks were different from us in their evaluation of hope: one felt it to be blind and malicious. | |
| From: report of Hesiod (works [c.700 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Dawn (Daybreak) 038 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this would be understandable envy, and unreasonable hope. Ridiculous envy can't possibly be good, and modest and sensible hope can't possibly be bad. I suspect he wants to exaggerate the relativism. |