Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Rearrangement of Particles' and 'Justified Belief as Responsible Belief'

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6 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
12801 Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
     Full Idea: Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
     From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
     A reaction: I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 3. Axioms for Geometry
13007 Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points.
     From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13
     A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
15540 You can't deny temporary intrinsic properties by saying the properties are relations (to times) [Lewis]
     Full Idea: To say that properties are really relations to times is to treat temporary intrinsics (such as my changing shape) as a matter of relations, but then 'intrinsic properties' would not deserve the name, and it is untenable if it denies temporary intrinsics.
     From: David Lewis (Rearrangement of Particles [1988], 1)
     A reaction: [I have compressed a paragraph; he refers to his 1986:204] If a property is meant to be a 'relation to a time', I am not sure what the relata are meant to be, and I agree with Lewis that this seems a long way from properties.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / c. Disjunctivism
12800 Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
     Full Idea: Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
     From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
     A reaction: I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 2. Pragmatic justification
12802 We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
     Full Idea: It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
     From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
     A reaction: [See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.
12803 Justification comes from acceptable procedures, given practical constraints [Foley]
     Full Idea: One justifiably believes a proposition if one has an epistemically rational belief that one's procedures with respect to it have been acceptable, given practical limitations, and one's goals.
     From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.322)
     A reaction: I quite like this, except that it is too individualistic. My goals, and my standards of acceptability decree whether I know? I don't see the relevance of goals; only a pragmatist would mention such a thing. Standards of acceptability are social.