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12801
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Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
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A reaction:
I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!
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12800
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Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
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A reaction:
I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.
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12802
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We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
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Full Idea:
It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
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A reaction:
[See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.
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21746
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Unlike hate, all desires can be satisfied by love [Russell]
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Full Idea:
If harmonious desires are what we should seek, love is better than hate, since, when two people love each other, both can be satisfied, whereas when they hate each other one at most can achieve the object of his desire.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22)
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A reaction:
A wonderful example of cool philosophical objectivity! Of course it is not true, because the fact that two people love one another doesn't not prevent them from having some incompatible desires, as every couple knows.
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21742
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Originally virtue was obedience, to gods, government, or custom [Russell]
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Full Idea:
Historically, virtue consisted at first of obedience to authority, whether that of the gods, the government, or custom.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927], Ch 22)
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A reaction:
Russell proceeds to demolish such a theory, which he finds it fairly easy to do. In Nietzsche's terms, he is only describing slave virtue. Each role in the world has its own virtues (and functions). Which gods are the most virtuous?
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22891
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We could be aware of time if senses briefly vibrated, extending their experience of movement [Russell, by Bardon]
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Full Idea:
Russell suggested, in defence of an empiricist theory of time-awareness, that a sense organ goes on vibrating, like a piano string, for while after the stimulation. Thus we can see the movement of a second hand, seen in several places at once.
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From:
report of Bertrand Russell (An Outline of Philosophy [1927]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 2 'Realism'
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A reaction:
Hm. If they were vibrating the last experience, they couldn't pick up the new one. When something fast happens the brain resonates fortissimo! If your eyes are moving it will be different neurons that get fired at each instant.
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