5 ideas
| 2764 | Full coherence might involve consistency and mutual entailment of all propositions [Blanshard, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Blanshard says that in a fully coherent system there would not only be consistency, but every proposition would be entailed by the others, and no proposition would stand outside the system. | |
| From: report of Brand Blanshard (The Nature of Thought [1939], 2:265) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 8.1 | |
| A reaction: Hm. If a proposition is entailed by the others, then it is a necessary truth (given the others) which sounds deterministic. You could predict all the truths you had never encountered. See 1578:178 for quote. |
| 19080 | Coherence tests for truth without implying correspondence, so truth is not correspondence [Blanshard, by Young,JO] |
| Full Idea: Blanshard said that coherent justification leads to coherence truth. It might be said that coherence is a test for truth, but truth is correspondence. But coherence doesn't guarantee correspondence, and coherence is a test, so truth is not correspondence. | |
| From: report of Brand Blanshard (The Nature of Thought [1939], Ch.26) by James O. Young - The Coherence Theory of Truth §2.2 | |
| A reaction: [compression of Young's summary] Rescher (1973) says that Blanshard's argument depends on coherence being an infallible test for truth, which it isn't. |
| 8825 | It seems impossible to logically deduce physical knowledge from indubitable sense data [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed on all hands that the classical epistemological project, conceived as one of deductively validating physical knowledge from indubitable sensory data, cannot succeed. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (What is 'naturalized epistemology'? [1988], p.304) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Enlightenment Project', which had a parallel in morality. Kim refers to the difficulty as 'The Humean Predicament'. Hume also hoped that induction might be deductive. One obvious move is to expand from 'deduction' to 'reason'. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |