6 ideas
20110 | Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski] |
Full Idea: The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit., | |
From: Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07) | |
A reaction: [a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three). |
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. |
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). |
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. |