17 ideas
| 8820 | Rules of reasoning precede the concept of truth, and they are what characterize it [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Rather than truth being fundamental and rules for reasoning being derived from it, the rules for reasoning come first and truth is characterized by the rules for reasoning about truth. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Cog.Mach') | |
| A reaction: This nicely disturbs our complacency about such things. There is plenty of reasoning in Homer, but I bet there is no talk of 'truth'. Pontius Pilate seems to have been a pioneer (Idea 8821). Do the truth tables define or describe logical terms? |
| 8819 | We need the concept of truth for defeasible reasoning [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: It might be wondered why we even have a concept of truth. The answer is that this concept is required for defeasible reasoning. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Cog.Mach') | |
| A reaction: His point is that we must be able to think critically about our beliefs ('is p true?') if we are to have any knowledge at all. An excellent point. Give that man a teddy bear. |
| 15941 | For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2 | |
| A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11] |
| 18247 | Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities. | |
| From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer. |
| 8822 | Statements about necessities need not be necessarily true [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: True statements about the necessary properties of things need not be necessarily true. The well-known example is that the number of planets (9) is necessarily an odd number. The necessity is de re, but not de dicto. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Nat.Internal') | |
| A reaction: This would be a matter of the scope (the placing of the brackets) of the 'necessarily' operator in a formula. The quick course in modal logic should eradicate errors of this kind in your budding philosopher. |
| 19542 | It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24) | |
| A reaction: This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own? |
| 19543 | To grasp understanding, we should be more explicit about what needs to be known [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: An essential prerequisite for useful discussion of the relation between knowledge and understanding is systematic explicitness about what is to be known or understood. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is better. I say what needs to be known for understanding is the essence of the item under discussion (my PhD thesis!). Obviously understanding needs some knowledge, but I take it that epistemology should be understanding-first. That is the main aim. |
| 8818 | Defeasible reasoning requires us to be able to think about our thoughts [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Defeasible reasoning requires us to be able to think about our thoughts. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Cog.Mach') | |
| A reaction: This is why I do not think animals 'know' anything, though they seem to have lots of true beliefs about their immediate situation. |
| 19541 | Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17) | |
| A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked. |
| 8811 | What we want to know is - when is it all right to believe something? [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: When we ask whether a belief is justified, we want to know whether it is all right to believe it. The question we must ask is 'when is it permissible (epistemically) to believe P?'. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Ep.Norms') | |
| A reaction: Nice to see someone trying to get the question clear. The question clearly points to the fact that there must at least be some sort of social aspect to criteria of justification. I can't cheerfully follow my intuitions if everyone else laughs at them. |
| 8817 | Logical entailments are not always reasons for beliefs, because they may be irrelevant [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Epistemologists have noted that logical entailments do not always constitute reasons. P may entail Q without the connection between P and Q being at all obvious. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Ref.of Extern') | |
| A reaction: Graham Priest and others try to develop 'relevance logic' to deal with this. This would deny the peculiar classical claim that everything is entailed by a falsehood. A belief looks promising if it entails lots of truths about the world. |
| 8814 | Epistemic norms are internalised procedural rules for reasoning [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Epistemic norms are to be understood in terms of procedural knowledge involving internalized rules for reasoning. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'How regulate?') | |
| A reaction: He offers analogies with bicycly riding, but the simple fact that something is internalized doesn't make it a norm. Some mention of truth is needed, equivalent to 'don't crash the bike'. |
| 8823 | Reasons are always for beliefs, but a perceptual state is a reason without itself being a belief [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: When one makes a perceptual judgement on the basis of a perceptual state, I want to say that the perceptual state itself is one's reason. ..Reason are always reasons for beliefs, but the reasons themselves need not be beliefs. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Dir.Realism') | |
| A reaction: A crucial issue. I think I prefer the view of Davidson, in Ideas 8801 and 8804. Three options: a pure perception counts as a reason, or perceptions involve some conceptual content, or you only acquire a reason when a proposition is formulated. |
| 8813 | If we have to appeal explicitly to epistemic norms, that will produce an infinite regress [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: If we had to make explicit appeal to epistemic norms for justification (the 'intellectualist model') we would find ourselves in an infinite regress. The norms, their existence and their application would themselves have to be justified. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'How regulate?') | |
| A reaction: This is counter to the 'space of reasons' picture, where everything is rationally assessed. There are regresses for both reasons and for experiences, when they are offered as justifications. |
| 8812 | Norm Externalism says norms must be internal, but their selection is partly external [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Norm Externalism acknowledges that the content of our epistemic norms must be internalist, but employs external considerations in the selection of the norms themselves. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Ep.Norms') | |
| A reaction: It can't be right that you just set your own norms, so this must contain some truth. Equally, even the most hardened externalist can't deny that what goes on in the head of the person concerned must have some relevance. |
| 8816 | Externalists tend to take a third-person point of view of epistemology [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: Externalists tend to take a third-person point of view in discussing epistemology. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Ref.of Extern') | |
| A reaction: Pollock's point, quite reasonably, is that the first-person aspect must precede any objective assessment of whether someone knows. External facts, such as unpublicised information, can undermine high quality internal justification. |
| 8815 | Belief externalism is false, because external considerations cannot be internalized for actual use [Pollock] |
| Full Idea: External considerations of reliability could not be internalized. Consequently, it is in principle impossible for us to actually employ externalist norms. I take this to be a conclusive refutation of belief externalism. | |
| From: John L. Pollock (Epistemic Norms [1986], 'Ref.of Extern') | |
| A reaction: Not so fast. He earlier rejected the 'intellectualist model' (Idea 8813), so he doesn't think norms have to be fully conscious and open to criticism. So they could be innate, or the result of indoctrination (sorry, teaching), or just forgotten. |