6 ideas
19727 | Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability [Comesaņa] |
Full Idea: The best definition of reliabilism seems to be: the agent has evidence, and bases the belief on the evidence, and the actual conditional reliability of the belief on the evidence is high enough. | |
From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is Comesaņa's own theory, derived from Alston 1998, and based on conditional probabilities. |
19725 | In a sceptical scenario belief formation is unreliable, so no beliefs at all are justified? [Comesaņa] |
Full Idea: If the processes of belief-formation are unreliable (perhaps in a sceptical scenario), then reliabilism has the consequence that those victims can never have justified beliefs (which Sosa calls the 'new evil demon problem'). | |
From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.1) | |
A reaction: That may be the right outcome. Could you have mathematical knowledge in a sceptical scenario? But that would be different processes. If I might be a brain in a vat, then it's true that I have no perceptual knowledge. |
19726 | How do we decide which exact process is the one that needs to be reliable? [Comesaņa] |
Full Idea: The reliabilist has the problem of finding a principled way of selecting, for each token-process of belief formation, the type whose reliability ratio must be high enough for the belief to be justified. | |
From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.3) | |
A reaction: The question is which exact process I am employing for some visual knowledge (and how the process should be described). Seeing, staring, squinting, glancing.... This seems to be called the 'generality problem'. |
20130 | It is absurd to think you can change your own essence, like a garment [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Man is necessity down to his last fibre, and totally 'unfree', that is if one means by freedom the foolish demand to be able to change one's 'essentia' arbitrarily, like a garment. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [1873], p.7), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 2 'Realism' | |
A reaction: This is the big difference between the existentialism of Nietzsche and the more famous Sartrean approach, where the idea of being able to remake your essence is the most exciting and glamorous proposal. I'm with Nietzsche. |
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. |