13 ideas
| 6840 | Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's later work we find him moving explicitly towards a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.191 | |
| A reaction: A nice corrective to the standard Anglo-Saxon assumption that Derrida is an extreme (and stupid) relativist. The notion of 'undeconstructability' is nice, just as Descartes found an idea that resisted the blasts of scepticism. |
| 21506 | A coherence theory of justification can combine with a correspondence theory of truth [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: There is no manifest absurdity in combining a coherence theory of justification with a correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: His point is to sharply (and correctly) distinguish coherent justification from a coherence theory of truth. Personally I would recommend talking of a 'robust' theory of truth, without tricky commitment to 'correspondence' between very dissimilar things. |
| 21509 | There will always be a vast number of equally coherent but rival systems [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: On any plausible conception of coherence, there will always be many, probably infinitely many, different and incompatible systems of belief which are equally coherent. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: If 'infinitely many' theories are allowed, that blocks the coherentist hope that widening and precisifying the system will narrow down the options and offer some verisimilitude. If we stick to current English expression, that should keep them finite. |
| 21503 | Empirical coherence must attribute reliability to spontaneous experience [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: An empirical coherence theory needs, for the beliefs of a cognitive system to be even candidates for empirical justification, that the system must contain laws attributing a high degree of reliability to a variety of spontaneous cognitive beliefs. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: Wanting such a 'law' seems optimistic, and not in the spirit of true coherentism, which can individually evaluate each experiential belief. I'm not sure Bonjour's Observation Requirement is needed, since it is incoherent to neglect observations. |
| 21511 | A well written novel cannot possibly match a real belief system for coherence [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: It is not even minimally plausible that a well written novel ...would have the degree of coherence required to be a serious alternative to anyone's actual system of beliefs. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct. 'Bleak House' is wonderfully consistent, but its elements are entirely verbal, and nothing occupies the space between the facts that are described. And Lady Dedlock is not in Debrett. I think this kills a standard objection. |
| 21510 | The objection that a negated system is equally coherent assume that coherence is consistency [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes it is said that if one has an appropriately coherent system, an alternative system can be produced simply be negating all of the components of the first system. This would only be so if coherence amounted simply to consistency. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: I associate Russell with this original objection to coherentism. I formerly took this to be a serious problem, and am now relieved to see that it clearly isn't. |
| 21505 | A coherent system can be justified with initial beliefs lacking all credibility [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: It is simply not necessary in order for [the coherence] view to yield justification to suppose that cognitively spontaneous beliefs have some degree of initial or independent credibility. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: This is thoroughly and rather persuasively criticised by Erik Olson. But he always focuses on the coherence of a 'system' with multiple beliefs. I take the credibility of each individual belief to need coherent assessment against a full background. |
| 21504 | The best explanation of coherent observations is they are caused by and correspond to reality [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The best explanation for a stable system of beliefs which rely on observation is that the beliefs are caused by what they depict, and the system roughly corresponds to the independent reality it describes. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Anyone who links best explanation to coherence (and to induction) warms the cockles of my heart. Erik Olson offers a critique, but doesn't convince me. The alternative is to find a better explanation (than reality), or give up. |
| 21508 | Anomalies challenge the claim that the basic explanations are actually basic [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The distinctive significance of anomalies lies in the fact that they undermine the claim of the allegedly basic explanatory principles to be genuinely basic. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [1985], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems plausible, suggesting that (rather than an anomaly flatly 'falsifying' a theory) an anomaly may just demand a restructuring or reconceptualising of the theory. |
| 22419 | 'I' is a subject in 'I am in pain' and an object in 'I am bleeding' [Wittgenstein, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: 'I' is used as a subject in 'I am in pain', ....and used as an object in 'I am bleeding'. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (The Blue and Brown Notebooks [1936], pp. 66-7) by Colin McGinn - Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals 4 | |
| A reaction: How about 'my wound is painful'? Does that have the logical form of a conversation? This idea is incorrect. Shoemaker (1968) suggests that the subjective use is immune to error, unlike the object use. |
| 6318 | The doctrine of indeterminacy of translation seems implied by the later Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation will have little air of paradox for readers familiar with Wittgenstein's latter-day remarks on meaning. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (The Blue and Brown Notebooks [1936], II.§16 n) by Willard Quine - Word and Object II.§16 n | |
| A reaction: This may be right, and I am inclined to link the names of Wittgenstein and Quine among those who led philosophy up a relativistic and sceptical cul-de-sac for many years. You can think too hard, you know. |
| 21936 | A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's modal reversal (where the only possible forgiveness is forgiving the unforgivable), the only possible community is the impossible community, which is a 'community of singularities' without anything in common. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Since this seems to go beyond multiculturalism, I can only see it as hyper-liberalism - that isolated individuals have an absolute status. Sounds like Nozick, but Derrida saw himself as a non-Marxist left-winger. |
| 21937 | Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether it is possible to think of a politics of democratic friendship that could free itself from the terrifying threat of homogenization. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Being terrified of people becoming all the same links Derrida to existentialist individualism. Is he just a linguistic existentialist, trying to free us from the tyranny of linguistic uniformity? |