6 ideas
12893 | Contextualism says sceptical arguments are true, relative to their strict context [Cohen,S] |
Full Idea: Contextualism explains the appeal of sceptical arguments by allowing that the claims of the sceptic are true, relative to the very strict context in which they are made. | |
From: Stewart Cohen (Contextualism Defended [2005], p.57) | |
A reaction: This strikes me a right. I've always thought that global scepticism must be conceded if we are being very strict indeed about justification, but also that it is ridiculous to be that strict. So the epistemological question is 'How strict should we be?' |
12896 | Knowledge is context-sensitive, because justification is [Cohen,S] |
Full Idea: The context-sensitivity of knowledge is inherited from one of its components, i.e. justification. | |
From: Stewart Cohen (Contextualism Defended [2005], p.68) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly right - that there is nothing relative or contextual about what is actually true, or what someone believes, but knowleddge is wholly relative because it rests on shifting standards of justification. |
12894 | There aren't invariant high standards for knowledge, because even those can be raised [Cohen,S] |
Full Idea: The problem for invariantism is that competent speakers, under sceptical pressure, tend to deny that we know even the most conspicuous facts of perception, the clearest memories etc. | |
From: Stewart Cohen (Contextualism Defended [2005], p.58) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at Idea 12892. This seems to me a strong response to the rather weak invariantist case (that there is 'really and truly' only one invariant standard for knowledge). Full strength scepticism about everything demolishes all knowledge. |
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 |
7607 | Nagarjuna and others pronounced the world of experience to be an illusion [Nagarjuna, by Armstrong,K] |
Full Idea: Many later Buddhists (after Nagarjuna, c.120 CE) developed a belief that everything we experience is an illusion: in the West we would call them idealists. | |
From: report of Nagarjuna (teachings [c.120]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.3 | |
A reaction: This is just one step beyond Plato (who at least hung onto the immediate world as an inferior reality), and is presumably intended to motivate meditators to break out of the misery of existence into a higher realm. Personally I am against it. |