11 ideas
| 17596 | Coherence problems have positive and negative restraints; solutions maximise constraint satisfaction [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: A coherence problem is a set of elements connected by positive and negative restraints, and a solution consists of partitioning the elements into two sets (accepted and rejected) in a way that maximises satisfaction of the constraints. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.42) | |
| A reaction: I'm enthusiastic about this, as it begins to clarify the central activity of epistemology, which is the quest for best explanations. |
| 17597 | Coherence is explanatory, deductive, conceptual, analogical, perceptual, and deliberative [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: I propose that there are six main kinds of coherence: explanatory, deductive, conceptual, analogical, perceptual, and deliberative. ...Epistemic coherence is a combination of the first five kinds, and ethics adds the sixth. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.43) | |
| A reaction: Wonderful. Someone is getting to grips with the concept of coherence, instead of just whingeing about how vague it is. |
| 17598 | Explanatory coherence needs symmetry,explanation,analogy,data priority, contradiction,competition,acceptance [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: Informally, a theory of explanatory coherence has the principles of symmetry, explanation, analogy, data priority, contradiction, competition and acceptance. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.44) | |
| A reaction: [Thagard give a concise summary of his theory here] Again Thagard makes a wonderful contribution in an area where most thinkers are pessimistic about making any progress. His principles are very plausible. |
| 17602 | Verisimilitude comes from including more phenomena, and revealing what underlies [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: A scientific theory is progressively approximating the truth if it increases its explanatory coherence by broadening to more phenomena and deepening by investigating layers of mechanisms. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.46) |
| 10990 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but unassertable in tricky cases? [Grice, by Read] |
| Full Idea: The 'conversational defence' of the truth-functional view of conditionals is that a conditional may not be assertible in difficult cases. | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 |
| 17601 | Neither a priori rationalism nor sense data empiricism account for scientific knowledge [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: Both rationalists (who start with a priori truths and make deductions) and empiricists (starting with indubitable sense data and what follows) would guarantee truth, but neither even begins to account for scientific knowledge. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.46) | |
| A reaction: Thagard's answer, and mine, is inference to the best explanation, but goes beyond both the a priori truths and the perceptions. |
| 17600 | Bayesian inference is forced to rely on approximations [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: It is well known that the general problem with Bayesian inference is that it is computationally intractable, so the algorithms used for computing posterior probabilities have to be approximations. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.45) | |
| A reaction: Thagard makes this sound devastating, but then concedes that all theories have to rely on approximations, so I haven't quite grasped this idea. He gives references. |
| 17599 | The best theory has the highest subjective (Bayesian) probability? [Thagard] |
| Full Idea: On the Bayesian view, the best theory is the one with the highest subjective probability, given the evidence as calculated by Bayes's theorem. | |
| From: Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.45) |
| 10991 | Key conversational maxims are 'quality' (assert truth) and 'quantity' (leave nothing out) [Grice, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Grice particularly identified two maxims as guiding conversation: the maxim of 'quality' (that one should assert only what one believes to be true and justified), and of 'quantity' (one should not assert less than one can). | |
| From: report of H. Paul Grice (Presupposition and Conversational Implicature [1977]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I think it would be very foolish to boldly embrace the second maxim when talking to strangers. If white lies are occasionally acceptable, then what is the status of the first 'maxim'? Is it a moral maxim? |
| 541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
| Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
| 542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
| Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
| From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |