6 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. |
| 7082 | Nature requires causal explanations, but society requires clarification by reasons and motives [Weber, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Weber coined the distinction between explanation and clarification, saying that natural phenomena require causal explanation, while social phenomena require clarification by giving reasons or offering possible motives for how things are. | |
| From: report of Max Weber (works [1905]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This is music to the ears of property dualists and other non-reductivists, but if you go midway in the hierarchy of animals (a mouse, say) the distinction blurs. Weber probably hadn't digested Darwin, whose big impact came around 1905. |
| 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? |
| 22155 | We are disenchanted because we rely on science, which ignores values [Weber, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: Weber contends that modern western civilisation is 'disenchanted' because our society's method of arriving at beliefs about the world, that is, the sciences, is unable to address questions of value. | |
| From: report of Max Weber (works [1905]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 6 | |
| A reaction: This idea, made explicit by Hume's empirical attitude to values, is obviously of major importance. For we Aristotelians values are a self-evident aspect of nature. Boulter says philosophy has added to the disenchantment. I agree. |