19 ideas
| 22864 | Philosophy is the study and criticsm of cultural beliefs, to achieve new possibilities [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is criticism of the influential beliefs that underlie culture, tracking them to their generating conditions and results, and considering their mutual compatibility. This terminates in a new perspective, which leads to new possibilities. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 6:19), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This would make quite a good manifesto for French thinkers of the 1960s. Foucault could hardly disagree. An excellent idea. |
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 22873 | Liberalism should improve the system, and not just ameliorate it [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism must become radical in the sense that, instead of using social power to ameliorate the evil consequences of the existing system, it shall use social power to change the system. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:287), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
| A reaction: Conservative liberals ask what people want, and try to give it to them. Radical liberals ask what people actually need, and try to make it possible. The latter is bound to be a bit paternalistic, but will probably create a better world. |
| 22869 | Knowledge is either the product of competent enquiry, or it is meaningless [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent enquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured into it. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
| A reaction: What is the criterion of 'competent'? Danger of tautology, if competent enquiry is what produces knowledge. |
| 22867 | The quest for certainty aims for peace, and avoidance of the stress of action [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The quest for certainty is a quest for a peace which is assured, an object which is unqualified by risk and the shadow of fear which action costs. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 4:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: This is a characteristic pragmatist account. I think Dewey and Peirce offer us the correct attitude to certainty. It is just not available to us, and can only be a delusion. That doesn't mean we don't know anything, however! |
| 22870 | No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
| A reaction: A nice pragmatist mantra, but no scientists gets a research grant to prove facts which have been securely established for a very long time. It is neurotic to keep returning to check that you have locked your front door. Dewey introduced 'warranted'. |
| 19718 | Indefeasibility does not imply infallibility [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Infallibility does not follow from indefeasibility. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Significance') | |
| A reaction: If very little evidence exists then this could clearly be the case. It is especially true of historical and archaeological evidence. |
| 19717 | Can a defeater itself be defeated? [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Can the original justification of a belief be regained through a successful defeat of a defeater? | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Defeater-Defs') | |
| A reaction: [Jäger 2005 addresses this] I would have thought the answer is yes. I aspire to coherent justifications, so I don't see justifications as a chain of defeat and counter-defeat, but as collective groups of support and challenge. |
| 19716 | Simple reliabilism can't cope with defeaters of reliably produced beliefs [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: An unmodified reliabilism does not accommodate defeaters, and surely there can be defeaters against reliably produced beliefs? | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Defeaters') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bonjour 1980] Reliabilism has plenty of problems anyway, since a generally reliable process can obviously occasionally produce a bad result. 20:20 vision is not perfect vision. Internalist seem to like defeaters. |
| 19715 | You can 'rebut' previous beliefs, 'undercut' the power of evidence, or 'reason-defeat' the truth [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: There are 'rebutting' defeaters against the truth of a previously justified belief, 'undercutting' defeaters against the power of the evidence, and 'reason-defeating' defeaters against the truth of the reason for the belief. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'How') | |
| A reaction: That is (I think) that you can defeat the background, the likelihood, or the truth. He cites Pollock 1986, and implies that these are standard distinctions about defeaters. |
| 19713 | Defeasibility theory needs to exclude defeaters which are true but misleading [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Advocates of the defeasibility theory have tried to exclude true pieces of information that are misleading defeaters. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'What') | |
| A reaction: He gives as an example the genuine news of a claim that the suspect has a twin. |
| 19714 | Knowledge requires that there are no facts which would defeat its justification [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: The 'defeasibility theory' of knowledge claims that knowledge is only present if there are no facts that - if they were known - would be genuine defeaters of the relevant justification. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'What') | |
| A reaction: Something not right here. A genuine defeater would ensure the proposition was false, so it would simply fail the truth test. So we need a 'defeater' for a truth, which must therefore by definition be misleading. Many qualifications have to be invoked. |
| 19719 | 'Moderate' foundationalism has basic justification which is defeasible [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Theories that combine basic justification with the defeasibility of this justification are referred to as 'moderate' foundationalism. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Significance') | |
| A reaction: I could be more sympathetic to this sort of foundationalism. But it begins to sound more like Neurath's boat (see Quine) than like Descartes' metaphor of building foundations. |
| 22866 | Mind is never isolated, but only exists in its interactions [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Mind is primarily a verb. ...Mind never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 10:267), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 1 'emerge' | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree with the idea that mind is a process, not a thing. Certain types of solitary introspection don't seem to quite fit his account, but in general he is right. |
| 22872 | Liberals aim to allow individuals to realise their capacities [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism is committed to …the liberation of individuals so that realisation of their capacities may be the law of their life. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:41), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
| A reaction: Capacity expression as the main aim of politics is precisely the idea developed more fully in modern times by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It strikes me as an excellent proposal. Does it need liberalism, or socialism? |
| 22880 | The things in civilisation we prize are the products of other members of our community [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The things in civilisation we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:57), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Reconstruct' | |
| A reaction: Dewey defends liberalism, but he has strong communitarian tendencies. What is the significance of an enduring community losing touch with its own achievements? |
| 22879 | 'God' is an imaginative unity of ideal values [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: 'God' represents a unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:29), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
| A reaction: This seems to have happened when a flawed God like Zeus is elevated to be the only God, and is given supreme power and wisdom. |
| 22877 | We should try attaching the intensity of religious devotion to intelligent social action [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: One of the few experiments in the attachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that of devotion (so intense as to be religious) to intelligence as a force in social action. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:53), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought that religious emotions such as devotion are so distinctive that they can be treated as valuable, even in the absence of belief. He seems to be advocating Technocracy. |
| 22878 | Religions are so shockingly diverse that they have no common element [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: There is only a multitude of religions …and the differences between them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
| A reaction: Religion is for Dewey what a game was for Wittgenstein, as an anti-essentialist example. I would have thought that they all involved some commitment to a realm of transcendent existence. |