9 ideas
| 13750 | Analysis aims at the structure of facts, which are needed to give a rationale to analysis [Urmson, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Urmson explains the direction of analysis as 'towards a structure...more nearly similar to the structure of the fact', adding that this metaphysical picture is needed as a 'rationale of the practice of analysis'. | |
| From: report of J.O. Urmson (Philosophical Analysis [1956], p.24-5) by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What n30 | |
| A reaction: In other words, only realists can be truly motivated to keep going with analysis. Merely analysing language-games is doable, but hardly exciting. |
| 19553 | Commitment to 'I have a hand' only makes sense in a context where it has been doubted [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: If I utter 'I know I have a hand' then I can only be reckoned a cooperative conversant by my interlocutors on the assumption that there was a real question as to whether I have a hand. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to point to the contextualist approach to global scepticism, which concerns whether we are setting the bar high or low for 'knowledge'. |
| 19551 | How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Those who deny skepticism but accept closure will have to explain how we know the various 'heavyweight' skeptical hypotheses to be false. Do we then twist the concept of knowledge to fit the twin desiderata of closue and anti-skepticism? | |
| From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [He is giving Dretske's view; Dretske says we do twist knowledge] Thus if I remember yesterday, that has the heavyweight implication that the past is real. Hawthorne nicely summarises why closure produces a philosophical problem. |
| 19552 | We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Maybe one cannot know the logical consequences of the proposition that one knows, on account of the fact that small risks add up to big risks. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 1) | |
| A reaction: The idea of closure is that the new knowledge has the certainty of logic, and each step is accepted. An array of receding propositions can lose reliability, but that shouldn't apply to logic implications. Assuming monotonic logic, of course. |
| 19554 | Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: How could we know that P and Q but not be in a position to know that P (as deniers of closure must say)? If my glass is full of wine, we know 'g is full of wine, and not full of non-wine'. How can we deny that we know it is not full of non-wine? | |
| From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
| A reaction: Hawthorne merely raises this doubt. Dretske is concerned with heavyweight implications, but how do you accept lightweight implications like this one, and then suddenly reject them when they become too heavy? [see p.49] |
| 5504 | Maybe we should see persons in four dimensions, with stages or time-slices at an instant [Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: Some recent philosophers have argued that we should replace the three-dimensional view of persons with a four-dimensional view according to which only time-slices, or 'stages', of persons exist at short intervals of time. | |
| From: R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.3) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this seems to neatly eliminate lots of traditional worries. But why would I want to retain my identity, if someone threatened to brainwash me. I also want to disown my inadequate earlier selves. Interesting, though. Lewis. |
| 5503 | Maybe personal identity is not vital in survival, and other continuations would suffice [Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: A modern question is whether personal identity is primarily what matters in survival; that is, people might cease and be continued by others whose continuation the original people would value as much. | |
| From: R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.3) | |
| A reaction: When put like this, the proposal seems hard to grasp. It only makes sense if you don't really believe in a thing called 'personal identity'. I don't see how you can believe in it without also believing that for you it has central importance. |
| 5502 | Locke's intrinsic view of personal identity has been replaced by an externalist view [Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: In modern times the Lockean intrinsic relations view of personal identity has been superseded by an extrinsic relations view (also called the 'closest-continuer' or 'externalist' view). | |
| From: R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds sweeping. My suspicion is that there is a raging fashion for externalist views of everything (justification, content etc.), but this will pass. I take Parfit to be the source of the modern views. |
| 5505 | For Aristotle the psyche perishes with the body (except possibly 'nous') [Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's view, with the possible exception of 'nous' the psyche and all its parts come into being at the same time as its associated body; it is inseparable from the body, and perishes along with it. | |
| From: R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.8) | |
| A reaction: It is suggested that he thought there was only one 'nous', which all humans share (p.9). If he wants to claim that one part is immortal, he doesn't have much evidence. If psyche is the form of the body, it is bound to perish. |