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19729
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'Modal epistemology' demands a connection between the belief and facts in possible worlds [Black,T]
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Full Idea:
In 'modal epistemologies' a belief counts as knowledge only if there is a modal connection - a connection not only to the actual world, but also to other non-actual possible worlds - between the belief and the facts of the matter.
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From:
Tim Black (Modal and Anti-Luck Epistemology [2011], 1)
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A reaction:
[Pritchard 2005 seems to be a source for this] This sounds to me a bit like Nozick's tracking or sensitivity theory. Nozick is, I suppose, diachronic (time must pass, for the tracking), where this theory is synchronic.
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21099
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People must have agreed to authority, because they are naturally equal, prior to education [Hume]
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Full Idea:
When we consider how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education, ...then nothing but their own consent could at first associate them together, and subject them to authority.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.276)
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A reaction:
This doesn't sound very convincing. Some people are much better suited than others to training and education. Men vary enormously in size.
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20495
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We no more give 'tacit assent' to the state than a passenger carried on board a ship while asleep [Hume]
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Full Idea:
[If we give 'tacit' assent to the state] ...we may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried aboard while asleep.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283)
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A reaction:
We should probably drop the whole idea that we give assent to the state. We are stuck with a state, and a few of us can escape, if it seems important enough, but most of us have no choice. He hope to assent to the controllers of the state.
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6703
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Poor people lack the knowledge or wealth to move to a different state [Hume]
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Full Idea:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages that he acquires?
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283)
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A reaction:
Of course, in the nineteenth century the Scottish poor did, going to America, which welcomed the poor, and spoke English. Hume's point is the right reply to anyone who says 'If you don't like it, go elsewhere'. Also 'No! Change it!'
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21102
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We all know that the history of property is founded on injustices [Hume]
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Full Idea:
Reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as land or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice.
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From:
David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.288)
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A reaction:
A prime objection to Nozick, who fantasises about an initial position of just ownership, which can then be the subject of just contracts. In 1866 thousands of white people were granted land in the USA, but not a single black freed slave got anything.
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