5 ideas
8616 | How can multiple statements, none of which is tenable, conjoin to yield a tenable conclusion? [Elgin] |
Full Idea: How can multiple statements, none of which is tenable, conjoin to yield a tenable conclusion? How can their relation to other less than tenable enhance their tenability? | |
From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.157) | |
A reaction: Her example is witnesses to a crime. Bayes Theorem appears to deal with individual items. "The thief had green hair" becomes more likely with multiple testimony. This is a very persuasive first step towards justification as coherence. |
8617 | Statements that are consistent, cotenable and supportive are roughly true [Elgin] |
Full Idea: The best explanation of coherence (where the components of a coherent account must be mutually consistent, cotenable and supportive) is that the account is at least roughly true. | |
From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.158) | |
A reaction: Note that she is NOT employing a coherence account of truth (which I take to be utterly wrong). It is notoriously difficult to define coherence. If the components must be 'tenable', they have epistemic status apart from their role in coherence. |
8618 | Coherence is a justification if truth is its best explanation (not skill in creating fiction) [Elgin] |
Full Idea: The best explanation of the coherence of 'Middlemarch' lies in the novelist's craft. Coherence conduces to epistemic acceptability only when the best explanation of the coherence of a constellation of claims is that they are (at least roughly) true. | |
From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.160) | |
A reaction: Yes. This combines my favourite inference to the best explanation (the favourite tool of us realists) with coherence as justification, where coherence can, crucially, have a social dimension. I begin to think this is the correct account of justification. |
468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
17993 | Laws are relations of kinds, quantities and qualities, supervening on the essences of a domain [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The laws of a domain are the fundamental, general explanatory relationships between kinds, quantities, and qualities of that domain, that supervene upon the essential natures of those things. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Dispositional Essentialism and the Laws of Nature [2012], 9.3) | |
A reaction: Hm. How small can the domain be? Can it embrace the multiverse? Supervenience is a rather weak relationship. How about 'are necessitated/entailed by'? Are the relationships supposed to do the explaining? I would have thought the natures did that. |