13 ideas
| 15585 | Later Heidegger sees philosophy as more like poetry than like science [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: In his later work Heidegger came to view philosophy as closer to poetry than to science. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (The Origin of the Work of Art [1935], p.178) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs' |
| 12582 | The function of beliefs is to produce beliefs-that-p when p [Millikan] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is a proper function of the belief-manufacturing mechanisms in John to produce beliefs-that-p only if and when p. | |
| From: Ruth Garrett Millikan (Thoughts without Laws [1986], p.69), quoted by Christopher Peacocke - A Study of Concepts 5.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the 'teleological' account of belief, which is trying to fit belief into an evolutionary view of humans. It is doubtful whether you can say mental states are just their 'proper' function, because then piano-playing becomes a puzzle. |
| 19528 | Knowledge is prior to believing, just as doing is prior to trying to do [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Knowing corresponds to doing, believing to trying. Just as trying is naturally understood in relation to doing, so believing is naturally understood in relation to knowing. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4) | |
| A reaction: An interesting analogy. You might infer that there can be no concept of 'belief' without the concept of 'knowledge', but we could say that it is 'truth' which is indispensible, and leave out knowledge entirely. Belief is to truth as trying is to doing? |
| 19527 | We don't acquire evidence and then derive some knowledge, because evidence IS knowledge [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: When we acquire new evidence in perception, we do not first acquire unknown evidence and then somehow base knowledge on it later. Rather, acquiring new is evidence IS acquiring new knowledge. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4) | |
| A reaction: This makes his point much better than Idea 19526 does. |
| 19529 | Belief explains justification, and knowledge explains belief, so knowledge explains justification [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: If justification is the fundamental epistemic norm of belief, and a belief ought to constitute knowledge, then justification should be understood in terms of knowledge too. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5) | |
| A reaction: If we are looking for the primitive norm which motivates the whole epistemic game, then I am thinking that truth might well play that role better than knowledge. TW would have to reply that it is the 'grasped truth', rather than the 'theoretical truth'. |
| 19536 | Knowledge-first says your total evidence IS your knowledge [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge-first equate one's total evidence with one's total knowledge. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.8) | |
| A reaction: Couldn't lots of evidence which merely had a high probability be combined together to give a state we would call 'knowledge'? Many dubious witnesses confirm the truth, as long as they are independent, and agree. |
| 19530 | A neutral state of experience, between error and knowledge, is not basic; the successful state is basic [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: A neutral state covering both perceiving and misperceiving (or remembering and misrembering) is not somehow more basic than perceiving, for what unifies the case of each neutral state is their relation to the successful state. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5-6) | |
| A reaction: An alternative is Disjunctivism, which denies the existence of a single neutral state, so that there is nothing to unite the two states, and they don't have a dependence relation. Why can't there be a prior family of appearances, some of them successful? |
| 19531 | Internalism about mind is an obsolete view, and knowledge-first epistemology develops externalism [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: A postulated underlying layer of narrow mental states is a myth, whose plausibility derives from a comfortingly familiar but obsolescent philosophy of mind. Knowledge-first epistemology is a further step in the development of externalism. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6) | |
| A reaction: Williamson is a real bruiser, isn't he? I don't take internalism about mind to be obsolescent at all, but now I feel so inferior for clinging to such an 'obsolescent' belief. ...But then I cling to Aristotle, who is (no doubt) an obsolete philosopher. |
| 19526 | Surely I am acquainted with physical objects, not with appearances? [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: When I ask myself what I am acquainted with, the physical objects in front of me are far more natural candidates than their appearances. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.3) | |
| A reaction: Not very impressive. The word 'acquainted' means the content of the experience, not the phenomena. Do I 'experience' the objects, or the appearances? The answer there is less obvious. If you apply it to colours, it is even less obvious. |
| 19534 | How does inferentialism distinguish the patterns of inference that are essential to meaning? [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Inferentialism faces the grave problem of separating patterns of inference that are to count as essential to the meaning of an expression from those that will count as accidental (a form of the analytic/synthetic distinction). | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a rather persuasive objection to inferentialism, though I don't personally take that as a huge objection to all internalist semantics. |
| 19535 | Internalist inferentialism has trouble explaining how meaning and reference relate [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The internalist version of inferentialist semantics has particular difficulty in establishing an adequate relation between meaning and reference. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that this was a big problem for referentialist semantics too, though evidently Williamson doesn't think so. If he is saying that the meaning is in the external world, dream on. |
| 19533 | Inferentialist semantics relies on internal inference relations, not on external references [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: On internalist inferential (or conceptual role) semantics, the inferential relations of an expression do not depend on what, if anything, it refers to, ...rather, the meaning is something like its place in a web of inferential relations. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6) | |
| A reaction: Williamson says the competition is between externalist truth-conditional referential semantics (which he favours), and this internalist inferential semantics. He is, like, an expert, of course, but I doubt whether that is the only internalist option. |
| 19532 | Truth-conditional referential semantics is externalist, referring to worldly items [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: Truth-conditional referential semantics is an externalist programme. In a context of utterance the atomic expressions of a language refer to worldly items, from which the truth-conditions of sentences are compositionally determined. | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6) | |
| A reaction: I just don't see how a physical object can be part of the contents of a sentence. 'Dragons fly' is atomic, and meaningful, but its reference fails. 'The cat is asleep' is just words - it doesn't contain a live animal. |