Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet', 'Apprehension: reason in absence of Rules' and 'Assertion'

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5 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences

15990	Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke]
	Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

15994	If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke]
	Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it.

12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 1. Common Sense

22668	Apprehension is a complex intellect grasping the essence of a complex object [Holt,L]
	Full Idea: The paradigm case of apprehension is of a complex intellect confronted with a complex object, in which the intellect understands in a particular context what is 'essential' about the object.
	From: Lynn Holt (Apprehension: reason in absence of Rules [2002], 3 'Expertise')
	A reaction: My line is that this apprehension cashes out as an immediate ability to explain the object. This is an enhanced version of the rational understanding of things found in most larger animals. Holt says her account is Aristotelian.

19. Language / F. Communication / 2. Assertion

18052	An assertion aims to add to the content of a context [Stalnaker, by Magidor]
	Full Idea: Stalnaker starts with the general thesis that the role of a successful assertion of s is to update the context by adding to it the content of s.
	From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.3.2
	A reaction: This is to be compared with criteria of meaningfulness, such as verificationism, and with Grice's rules of conversational implicature. Presumably if you assert what the context presupposes, you fail to assert, without being meaningless.

19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / b. Implicature

14718	An assertion is an attempt to rule out certain possibilities, narrowing things down for good planning [Stalnaker, by Schroeter]
	Full Idea: Stalnaker's guiding idea is that in making an assertion the speaker is trying to get the audience to rule out certain possibilities. ....If all goes well, further planning will proceed on the basis of a smaller and more accurate range of possibilities.
	From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics
	A reaction: This sounds intuitively rather plausible, and is a nice original thought. This is what we pay clever chaps like Stalnaker to come up with. It seems to imply some notion of verisimilitude (qv. under 'truth'), depending on how much narrowing happens.