Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Problems of Epistemology', 'works' and 'The Problem of Consciousness'

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification

3568	Surely ALL truths are externally justified, by the facts? [Cross,A]
	Full Idea: Surely ALL truths are externally justified?
	From: Adam Cross (works [2001]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas)
	A reaction: A very nice warning to aspiring externalists. If you actually think the justification is somehow 'out there', then everything is going to be justified, by its own facts. We need to get the justification 'in here'.

14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 6. Falsification

18284	Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper]
	Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one.
	From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws'
	A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead.

17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 6. Mysterianism

7388	McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn]
	Full Idea: McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining.
	From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1
	A reaction: I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information...

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability

3185	Multiple realisability rules out hidden essences and experts as the source of water- and gold-concepts [McGinn]
	Full Idea: The multiple realisability emphasised by functionalists rules out the hidden essences (and the 'deferential' move in semantics) that one finds in the cases, for example, of "water" and "gold" emphasised by Kripke and Putnam.
	From: Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991], p.132)
	A reaction: Presumably if they are 'hidden', then the people to whom we 'defer' for our concepts can't actually know about the essences we are supposed to be discussing. You can mean essences without knowing them. Cf. Loch Ness Monster.