26 ideas
| 3695 | Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: My conviction is that philosophy is a priori if it is anything. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How about knowledge of a posteriori necessities, such as the length of a metre, known by observation of the standard metre in Paris? |
| 10838 | To explain a concept, we need its purpose, not just its rules of usage [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: We cannot in general suppose that we give a proper account of a concept by describing those circumstance in which we do, and those in which we do not, make use of the relevant word. We explain the point of the concept, what we use the word for. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.231) | |
| A reaction: Well said. I am beginning to develop a campaign to make sure that analytical philosophy focuses on understanding concepts (in a full 'logos' sort of way), and doesn't just settle for logical form or definition or rules of usage. |
| 3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: If one never in fact grasps any necessary connections between anything, it is hard to see what reasoning could possible amount to. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.3) |
| 3700 | Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The epistemic authority of coherence cannot itself be established by appeal to coherence. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7 n50) | |
| A reaction: The standard approach amongs modern philosophers (following, I think, Kripke) is to insist on 'intuition' as basic, despite all its problems. I have no better suggestion. |
| 10837 | It is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.231) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a rather contentious but very interesting claim. An even stronger claim might be that its value (its normative force) is ALL that the concept of truth contributes to speech, other aspects being analysed into something else. |
| 10840 | We must be able to specify truths in a precise language, like winning moves in a game [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For a particular bounded language, if it is free of ambiguity and inconsistency, it must be possible to characterize the true sentences of the language; somewhat as, for a given game, we can say which moves are winning moves. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.237) | |
| A reaction: The background of this sounds rather like Tarski, with truth just being a baton passed from one part of the language to another, though Dummett adds the very un-Tarskian notion that truth has a value. |
| 19171 | Tarski's truth is like rules for winning games, without saying what 'winning' means [Dummett, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Tarski's definition of truth is like giving a definition of what it is to win in various games, without giving a hint as to what winning is (e.g. that it is what one tries to do when playing). | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (Truth [1959]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 7 | |
| A reaction: This led Dummett to his 'normative' account of truth. Formally, the fact that speakers usually aim at truth seems irrelevant, but in life you certainly wouldn't have grasped truth if you thought falsehood was just as satisfactory. The world is involved. |
| 3697 | The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: While necessity and possibility are interdefinable concepts, it is the idea of a possible world or situation which is intuitively primary. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.3) |
| 3707 | Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Criteria or rules do not somehow apply to themselves. They must be judged by the sort of rational insight or intuition that the rationalist is advocating. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §5.2) |
| 3704 | Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Moderate rationalism preserves a priori justification, but rejects the idea that it is infallible. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) |
| 3696 | A priori justification requires understanding but no experience [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori. |
| 3706 | A priori justification can vary in degree [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: A priori justification can vary in degree. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.5) | |
| A reaction: This idea, which I trace back at least to Russell, seems to me one of breakthrough ideas in modern thought. It means that a priori knowledge can be reconnected with a posteriori knowledge. |
| 3703 | You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Moderate empiricists try unsuccessfully to explain a priori justification by means of analyticity, and radical empiricist attempts to dispense with a priori justification end in nearly total scepticism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: My working theory is neither of the above. Because we can abstract from the physical world, we can directly see/experience generalised (and even necessary) truths about it. |
| 3699 | The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The attempt to prove physical statements on the basis of sensory evidence is defeated by the problem of induction. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's use of the word 'prove', which would be a pretty forlorn hope. Insofar as experience proves anything, fully sensing a chair proves its existence. |
| 21515 | Incoherence may be more important for enquiry than coherence [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: While coherence may lack the positive role many have assigned to it, ...incoherence plays an important negative role in our enquiries. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Peirce as the main source for this idea] We can hardly by deeply impressed by incoherence if we have no sense of coherence. Incoherence is just one of many markers for theory failure. Missing the target, bad concepts... |
| 21514 | Coherence is the capacity to answer objections [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: According to Lehrer, coherence should be understood in terms of the capacity to answer objections. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 9) | |
| A reaction: [Keith Lehrer 1990] We can connect this with the Greek requirement of being able to give an account [logos], which is the hallmark of understanding. I take coherence to be the best method of achieving understanding. Any understanding meets Lehrer's test. |
| 21496 | Mere agreement of testimonies is not enough to make truth very likely [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: Far from guaranteeing a high likelihood of truth by itself, testimonial agreement can apparently do so only if the circumstances are favourable as regards independence, prior probability, and individual credibility. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is Olson's main thesis. His targets are C.I.Lewis and Bonjour, who hoped that a mere consensus of evidence would increase verisimilitude. I don't see a problem for coherence in general, since his favourable circumstances are part of it. |
| 21499 | Coherence is only needed if the information sources are not fully reliable [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: An enquirer who is fortunate enough to have at his or her disposal fully reliable information sources has no use for coherence, the need for which arises only in the context of less than fully reliable informations sources. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be entirely false. How do you assess reliability? 'I've seen it with my own eyes'. Why trust your eyes? In what visibility conditions do you begin to doubt your eyes? Why do rational people mistrust their intuitions? |
| 21502 | A purely coherent theory cannot be true of the world without some contact with the world [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: The Input Objection says a pure coherence theory would seem to allow that a system of beliefs be justified in spite of being utterly out of contact with the world it purports to describe, so long as it is, to a sufficient extent, coherent. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Olson seems impressed by this objection, but I don't see how a system could be coherently about the world if it had no known contact with the world. Olson seems to ignore meta-coherence, which evaluates the status of the system being studied. |
| 21512 | Extending a system makes it less probable, so extending coherence can't make it more probable [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: Any non-trivial extension of a belief system is less probable than the original system, but there are extensions that are more coherent than the original system. Hence more coherence does not imply a higher probability. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [Olson cites Klein and Warfield 1994; compressed] The example rightly says the extension could have high internal coherence, but not whether the extension is coherent with the system being extended. |
| 3701 | Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: An externalist theory of epistemic justification or warrant need not involve the possession by the believer of anything like a reason for thinking that their belief is true. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
| A reaction: That is the problem with externalism. If the believer does not have a reason, then why would they believe? Externalists are interesting on justification, but daft about belief. Why do I believe I know something, when I can't recall how I learnt it? |
| 3702 | Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: If externalism is the final story, we have no reason to think that any of our beliefs are true, which amounts to a very strong and intuitively implausible version of scepticism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
| A reaction: A very good point. I may, like a cat, know many things, with good external support, but as soon as I ask sceptical questions, I sink without trace if I lack internal reasons. |
| 3709 | Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7) |
| 3708 | All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: I assume that the contents of thought can be accounted for by appeal to just two general sorts of ingredient - properties (including relations) and indexicals. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §6.7) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept that relations are a type of properties. Since he does not include objects or substances, I take it that he considers objects to be bundles of properties. |
| 10839 | You can't infer a dog's abstract concepts from its behaviour [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: One could train a dog to bark only when a bell rang and a light shone without presupposing that it possessed the concept of conjunction. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth [1959], p.235) |
| 3698 | Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation would be better described as the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning and belief. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.5) | |
| A reaction: Not necessarily. It is not incoherent to believe that the target people have a coherent and stable system of meaning and belief, but finding its translation indeterminate because it is holistic, and rooted in a way of life. |