6 ideas
15549 | If it were true that nothing at all existed, would that have a truthmaker? [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If there was absolutely nothing at all, then it would have been true that there was nothing. Would there have been a truthmaker for this truth? | |
From: David Lewis (A world of truthmakers? [1998], p.220) | |
A reaction: This is a problem for Lewis's own claim that 'truth supervenes on being', as well as the more restricted truthmakers invoked by Armstrong. |
19553 | Commitment to 'I have a hand' only makes sense in a context where it has been doubted [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: If I utter 'I know I have a hand' then I can only be reckoned a cooperative conversant by my interlocutors on the assumption that there was a real question as to whether I have a hand. | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
A reaction: This seems to point to the contextualist approach to global scepticism, which concerns whether we are setting the bar high or low for 'knowledge'. |
19551 | How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: Those who deny skepticism but accept closure will have to explain how we know the various 'heavyweight' skeptical hypotheses to be false. Do we then twist the concept of knowledge to fit the twin desiderata of closue and anti-skepticism? | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], Intro) | |
A reaction: [He is giving Dretske's view; Dretske says we do twist knowledge] Thus if I remember yesterday, that has the heavyweight implication that the past is real. Hawthorne nicely summarises why closure produces a philosophical problem. |
19552 | We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: Maybe one cannot know the logical consequences of the proposition that one knows, on account of the fact that small risks add up to big risks. | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: The idea of closure is that the new knowledge has the certainty of logic, and each step is accepted. An array of receding propositions can lose reliability, but that shouldn't apply to logic implications. Assuming monotonic logic, of course. |
19554 | Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: How could we know that P and Q but not be in a position to know that P (as deniers of closure must say)? If my glass is full of wine, we know 'g is full of wine, and not full of non-wine'. How can we deny that we know it is not full of non-wine? | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
A reaction: Hawthorne merely raises this doubt. Dretske is concerned with heavyweight implications, but how do you accept lightweight implications like this one, and then suddenly reject them when they become too heavy? [see p.49] |
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? |