6 ideas
| 8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
| 8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
| 8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
| 8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
| Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
| From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
| A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
| 20329 | A work of art is an artifact created for the artworld [Dickie] |
| Full Idea: A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. | |
| From: George Dickie (The New Institutional Theory of Art [1983], p.53) | |
| A reaction: This is the culminating definition in his paper, deriving originally from Danto, and an improvement of his earlier more complex definition. Since this definition amounts to 'this is art if I say it is art', it doesn't seem to reveal much. |
| 21240 | The truth about events always comes from the oppressed and disadvantaged [Sartre, by Bakewell] |
| Full Idea: Work out who is most oppressed and disadvantaged in the situation, and then adopt their version of events as the right one. If something is not true in the eyes of the least favoured, then it is not true. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (The Communists and Peace [1953], final part) by Sarah Bakewell - At the Existentialist Café 12 | |
| A reaction: A theory of social truth, rather than truth in general. A bit simplistic, but appealing. If you want to know the truth, ask the people involved. This is true of the Savoy Grill, as well as of homeless life. You must first care about the oppressed. |