5 ideas
| 19494 | Fictionalism allows that simulated beliefs may be tracking real facts [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The fictionalist offers the option that your simulated beliefs and assertions may be tracking a realm of genuine facts, or a realm of what you take to be facts. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 13) | |
| A reaction: This means that fictionalism does not have to be an error theory. That is, we aren't mistakenly believing something that we actually made up. Instead we are sensibly believing something we know to be not literally true. Love it. |
| 19493 | Governing possible worlds theory is the fiction that if something is possible, it happens in a world [Yablo] |
| Full Idea: The governing fiction of possible worlds theory says that whenever something is possible, there is a world where it happens. | |
| From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 05) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the only sensible attitude to possible worlds I can think of. |
| 19730 | Epistemic virtues: love of knowledge, courage, caution, autonomy, practical wisdom... [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Virtue theorists may focus on the particular habits or virtues of successful cognizers, such as love of knowledge, firmness, courage and caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], III) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Roberts and Wood 2007] It is interesting that most of these virtues do not merely concern cognition. How about diligence, self-criticism, flexibility...? |
| 19731 | If epistemic virtues are faculties or powers, that doesn't explain propositional knowledge [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Conceiving of the virtues in terms of faculties or powers doesn't help at all with the problem of accounting for propositional knowledge. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: It always looks as if epistemic virtues are a little peripheral to the main business of knowledge, which is getting beliefs to be correct and well-founded. Given that epistemic saints make occasional mistakes, talk of virtues can't be enough. |
| 19732 | The value of good means of attaining truth are swamped by the value of the truth itself [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: The Swamping Problem is that the value of truth swamps the value of additional features of true beliefs which are only instrumentally related to them. True belief is no more valuable if one adds a feature valuable for getting one to the truth. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Virtue Epistemology [2011], IV B) | |
| A reaction: His targets here are reliabilism and epistemic virtues. Kvanvig's implication is that the key to understanding the nature of knowledge is to pinpoint why we value it so much. |