Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Meaning and Necessity' and 'What is Knowledge-First Epistemology?'

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5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
Don't confuse justified belief with justified believers [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: Much theorizing about justification conflates issues of justified belief with issues of justified/blameless believers.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.12)
     A reaction: [They cite Kent Bach 1985] Presumably the only thing that really justifies a belief is the truth, or the actual facts. You could then say 'p is a justified belief, though no one actually believes it'. E.g. the number of stars is odd.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / b. Need for justification
If knowledge is unanalysable, that makes justification more important [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: If knowledge is indeed unanalyzable, that could be seen as a liberation of justification to assume importance in its own right.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.11)
     A reaction: [They cite Kvanvig 2003:192 and Greco 2010:9-] See Scruton's Idea 3897. I suspect that we should just give up discussing 'knowledge', which is a woolly and uninformative term, and focus on where the real epistemological action is.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion (where 'mammals' contains 'cats') [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion. 'Cat' entails 'mammal' because the cats are a subset of the mammals.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.10)
     A reaction: I would have thought that this was only one type of entailment. 'Travelling to Iceland entails flying'. Travelling includes flying, the reverse of cats/mammals, to a very complex set-theoretic account is needed. Interesting.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 8. Possible Worlds Semantics
The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true [Carnap, by Kaplan]
     Full Idea: Carnap's proposal is to understand the category of intensions appropriate to sentences (his 'propositions') as sets of possible worlds. The intension of the sentence is taken as the set of all possible worlds in which the sentence is true.
     From: report of Rudolph Carnap (Meaning and Necessity [1947]) by David Kaplan - Transworld Heir Lines p.90
     A reaction: [reference?] This extension of the truth-conditions view of meaning strikes me as being very attractive. Except that whole worlds hardly seem to be relevant to my remark about how lunch might have been improved.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
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?