14 ideas
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There is no history from the viewpoint of nomads, although everything passes through them, to the point that they are like the noumena or the unknowable of history. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.107) | |
| A reaction: Nomads have the same place in society that indeterminate 'stuff' has in an object-orientated metaphysics. Deleuze seems to be romanticising nomads the way the late Victorians romanticised gypsies. |
| 14767 | The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 14764 | I am saturated with the spirit of physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I am saturated, through and through, with the spirit of the physical sciences. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.1) |
| 14768 | Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.3) |
| 14765 | Association of ideas is the best philosophical idea of the prescientific age [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of the association of ideas is, to my thinking, the finest piece of philosophical work of the prescientific ages. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 19513 | A contextualist coherentist will say that how strongly a justification must cohere depends on context [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: If you are a coherentist and a contextualist, you'll probably want to hold that how strongly beliefs must cohere with one another in order to count as knowledge (if they are true), or to count as justified, is a contextually variable matter. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: How exciting! He's talking about ME! Context might not only dictate the strength of the coherence, but also the range of beliefs involved. In fact all of Thagard's criteria of coherence may be subject to contextual variation. |
| 19514 | Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: The great rival to contextualism is classical 'invariantism' - invariantism about the truth-conditions [for knowing], combined with variable standards for warranted assertability. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that we might want to assert that someone 'knows' something, when the truth is that they don't. That is, either you know or you don't, but we can bend the rules as to whether we say you know. I take this view to be false. |
| 19515 | We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: We might make the basic contextualist schema more precise ...by saying the change in content will consist in a change in the range of relevant alternatives. Higher standards would discriminate from a broader range of alternatives. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.14) | |
| A reaction: This would handle the 'fake barn' and 'disguised zebra' examples, by saying lower standards do not expect such discriminations. The zebra case has a lower standard than the barn case (because fake barns are the norm here). |
| 19510 | In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: I'm inclined to accept that in certain contexts the standards for knowledge are so low that little more than true belief is required. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: DeRose emphasises that 'a little more' is needed, rather than none. The example given is where 'he knew that p' means little more than 'the information that p was available to him' (in a political scandal). |
| 19516 | Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: While skepticism has drawn much of the attention of contextualists, support for contextualism should also - and perhaps primarily - be looked for in how 'knows' is utilised in non-philosophical conversation. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1016) | |
| A reaction: Contextualists say scepticism is just raising the standards absurdly high. I take it that the ordinary use of the word 'know' is obviously highly contextual, and so varied that I don't see how philosophers could 'regiment' it into invariant form. |
| 19511 | If contextualism is about knowledge attribution, rather than knowledge, then it is philosophy of language [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: Maybe contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge at all, but about knowledge attributions. As such, it is not a piece of epistemology at all, but of philosophy of language. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: DeRose takes this view to be wrong. At the very least this will have to include self-attributions, by the supposed knower, because I might say 'I know that p', meaning 'but only in this rather low-standard context'. |
| 14766 | Duns Scotus offers perhaps the best logic and metaphysics for modern physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The works of Duns Scotus have strongly influenced me. …His logic and metaphysics, torn away from its medievalism, …will go far toward supplying the philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical science. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 21853 | We are currently extending capitalism to the whole of society [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: What characterises our situation is ….the extension of capitalism to the whole social body. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.110) | |
| A reaction: This is driven by the naïve people who think all problems can be solved by market forces, and that to everything that goes bankrupt we should just say 'good riddance'. |
| 21851 | The State requires self-preservation, but the war-machine desires destruction [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There will always be a tension between the State apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation, and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State, and even to destroy itself. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.106) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit WWI quite well, but the desire of the war-machine to destroy the State which pays for it sounds unlikely. Nevertheless war is appalling for the state, but it is the whole point of the war-machine, which gets restless. |