Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Internalism Exposed', 'Action' and 'Is Hume's Principle analytic?'

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21 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism
6871 We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman]
     Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2)
     A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember.
6872 Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman]
     Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3)
     A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind.
6874 Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman]
     Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4)
     A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / c. Coherentism critique
6873 Coherent justification seems to require retrieving all our beliefs simultaneously [Goldman]
     Full Idea: The problem of Concurrent Retrieval is a problem for internalism, notably coherentism, because an agent could ascertain coherence of her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3)
     A reaction: Sounds neat, but not very convincing. Goldman is relying on scepticism about short-term memory, but all belief and knowledge will collapse if we go down that road. We couldn't do simple arithmetic if Goldman's point were right.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge
6875 Reliability involves truth, and truth is external [Goldman]
     Full Idea: Reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §6)
     A reaction: As an argument for externalism this seems bogus. I am not sure that truth is either 'internal' or 'external'. How could the truth of 3+2=5 be external? Facts are mostly external, but I take truth to be a relation between internal and external.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence
8693 An 'abstraction principle' says two things are identical if they are 'equivalent' in some respect [Boolos]
     Full Idea: Hume's Principle has a structure Boolos calls an 'abstraction principle'. Within the scope of two universal quantifiers, a biconditional connects an identity between two things and an equivalence relation. It says we don't care about other differences.
     From: George Boolos (Is Hume's Principle analytic? [1997]), quoted by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.7
     A reaction: This seems to be the traditional principle of abstraction by ignoring some properties, but dressed up in the clothes of formal logic. Frege tries to eliminate psychology, but Boolos implies that what we 'care about' is relevant.
20. Action / A. Definition of Action / 1. Action Theory
20014 Actions include: the involuntary, the purposeful, the intentional, and the self-consciously autonomous [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: There are different levels of action, including at least: unconscious and/or involuntary behaviour, purposeful or goal-directed activity, intentional action, and the autonomous acts or actions of self-consciously active human agents.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1)
     A reaction: The fourth class is obviously designed to distinguish us from the other animals. It immediately strikes me as very optimistic to distinguish four (at least) clear categories, but you have to start somewhere.
20. Action / A. Definition of Action / 4. Action as Movement
20019 Maybe bodily movements are not actions, but only part of an agent's action of moving [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Some say that the movement's of agent's body are never actions. It is only the agent's direct moving of, say, his leg that constitutes a physical action; the leg movement is merely caused by and/or incorporated as part of the act of moving.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1.2)
     A reaction: [they cite Jennifer Hornsby 1980] It seems normal to deny a twitch the accolade of an 'action', so I suppose that is right. Does the continual movement of my tongue count as action? Only if I bring it under control? Does it matter? Only in forensics.
20021 Is the action the arm movement, the whole causal process, or just the trying to do it? [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers have favored the overt arm movement the agent performs, some favor the extended causal process he initiates, and some prefer the relevant event of trying that precedes and 'generates' the rest.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1.2)
     A reaction: [Davidson argues for the second, Hornsby for the third] There seems no way to settle this, and a compromise looks best. Mere movement won't do, and mere trying won't do, and whole processes get out of control.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / a. Nature of intentions
20022 To be intentional, an action must succeed in the manner in which it was planned [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: If someone fires a bullet to kill someone, misses, and dislodges hornets that sting him to death, this implies that an intentional action must include succeeding in a manner according to the original plan.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 2)
     A reaction: [their example, compressed] This resembles Gettier's problem cases for knowledge. If the shooter deliberately and maliciously brought down the hornet's nest, that would be intentional murder. Sounds right.
20023 If someone believes they can control the lottery, and then wins, the relevant skill is missing [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: If someone enters the lottery with the bizarre belief that they can control who wins, and then wins it, that suggest that intentional actions must not depend on sheer luck, but needs competent exercise of the relevant skill.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 2)
     A reaction: A nice companion to Idea 20022, which show that a mere intention is not sufficient to motivate and explain an action.
20025 We might intend two ways to acting, knowing only one of them can succeed [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: If an agent tries to do something by two different means, only one of which can succeed, then the behaviour is rational, even though one of them is an attempt to do an action which cannot succeed.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 2)
     A reaction: [a concise account of a laborious account of an example from Bratman 1984, 1987] Bratman uses this to challenge the 'Simple View', that intention leads straightforwardly to action.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / c. Reducing intentions
20031 On one model, an intention is belief-desire states, and intentional actions relate to beliefs and desires [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: On the simple desire-belief model, an intention is a combination of desire-belief states, and an action is intentional in virtue of standing in the appropriate relation to these simpler terms.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 4)
     A reaction: This is the traditional view found in Hume, and is probably endemic to folk psychology. They cite Bratman 1987 as the main opponent of the view.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / d. Group intentions
20028 Groups may act for reasons held by none of the members, so maybe groups are agents [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Rational group action may involve a 'collectivising of reasons', with participants acting in ways that are not rationally recommended from the individual viewpoint. This suggests that groups can be rational, intentional agents.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 2)
     A reaction: [Pettit 2003] is the source for this. Gilbert says individuals can have joint commitment; Pettit says the group can be an independent agent. The matter of shared intentions is interesting, but there is no need for the ontology to go berserk.
20027 If there are shared obligations and intentions, we may need a primitive notion of 'joint commitment' [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: An account of mutual obligation to do something may require that we give up reductive individualist accounts of shared activity and posit a primitive notion of 'joint commitment'.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 2)
     A reaction: [attributed to Margaret Gilbert 2000] If 'we' are trying to do something, that seems to give an externalist picture of intentions, rather like all the other externalisms floating around these days. I don't buy any of it, me.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 2. Acting on Beliefs / b. Action cognitivism
20016 Strong Cognitivism identifies an intention to act with a belief [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: A Strong Cognitivist is someone who identifies an intention with a certain pertinent belief about what she is doing or about to do.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1.1)
     A reaction: (Sarah Paul 2009 makes this distinction) The belief, if so, seems to be as much counterfactual as factual. Hope seems to come into it, which isn't exactly a belief.
20017 Weak Cognitivism says intentions are only partly constituted by a belief [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: A Weak Cognitivist holds that intentions are partly constituted by, but are not identical with, relevant beliefs about the action. Grice (1971) said an intention is willing an action, combined with a belief that this will lead to the action.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1.1)
     A reaction: [compressed] I didn't find Strong Cognitivism appealing, but it seems hard to argue with some form of the weak version.
20018 Strong Cognitivism implies a mode of 'practical' knowledge, not based on observation [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Strong Cognitivists say intentions/beliefs are not based on observation or evidence, and are causally reliable in leading to appropriate actions, so this is a mode of 'practical' knowledge that has not been derived from observation.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 1.1)
     A reaction: [compressed - Stanford unnecessarily verbose!] I see no mention in this discussion of 'hoping' that your action will turn out OK. We are usually right to hope, but it would be foolish to say that when we reach for the salt we know we won't knock it over.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism
20012 Maybe the explanation of an action is in the reasons that make it intelligible to the agent [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Some have maintained that we explain why an agent acted as he did when we explicate how the agent's normative reasons rendered the action intelligible in his eyes.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: Modern psychology is moving against this, by showing how hidden biases can predominate over conscious reasons (as in Kahnemann's work). I would say this mode of explanation works better for highly educated people (but you can chuckle at that).
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / c. Reasons as causes
20029 Causalists allow purposive explanations, but then reduce the purpose to the action's cause [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Most causalists allow that reason explanations are teleological, but say that such purposive explanations are analysable causally, where the primary reasons for the act are the guiding causes of the act.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], 3)
     A reaction: The authors observe that it is hard to adjudicate on this matter, and that the concept of the 'cause' of an action is unclear.
20013 It is generally assumed that reason explanations are causal [Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: The view that reason explanations are somehow causal explanations remains the dominant position.
     From: Wilson,G/Schpall,S (Action [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: I suspect that this is only because no philosopher has a better idea, and the whole issue is being slowly outflanked by psychology.