15 ideas
| 19682 | Internalists are much more interested in evidence than externalists are [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: The notion of evidence generally plays a much more significant role in internalist epistemologies than it does in various forms of externalism. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that this is because evidence needs a certain amount of interpretation, whereas raw facts (which externalists seem to rely on) may never even enter a mind. |
| 19687 | Absence of evidence proves nothing, and weird claims need special evidence [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Two well know slogans (popularised by Carl Sagan) are 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', ...and 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Absence') | |
| A reaction: [Sagan was a popular science writer and broadcaster] The second one is something like Hume's argument against miracles. The old problem of the 'missing link' for human evolution embodied the first idea. |
| 19684 | Does spotting a new possibility count as evidence? [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Does the sudden realization of a heretofore unrecognized possibility count as evidence? | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
| A reaction: [Nice use of 'heretofore'! Why say 'previously' when you can keep these wonderful old English words alive?] This means that we can imagine new evidence ('maybe the murderer was a snake'!). Wrong. The evidence is what suggests the possibility. |
| 19688 | Every event is highly unlikely (in detail), but may be perfectly plausible [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: At a certain level of detail, almost any claim is unprecedented. How likely is 'Matilda won at Scrabble on Thursday with a score of 438 while drinking mint tea'? But there is nothing particularly unbelievable about the claim. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Extraordinary') | |
| A reaction: A striking idea, which rules out the simplistic idea that we can just assess evidence by its isolated likelihood. Context is crucial. How good is 438? What if she smoked opium? What if there is no Scrabble set on her island? |
| 19686 | Criminal law needs two separate witnesses, but historians will accept one witness [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: An ancient rule in law is that a criminal conviction needs evidence of two independent witnesses, but in history it is assumed that a document deserves the benefit of the doubt if it cannot be independently verified. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
| A reaction: [compressed; McGrew's full account qualifies it a bit] A nice observation. One might even be suspicious of the two 'independent' witnesses, if there were lots of other reasons to doubt someon's guilt. A single weird document is also dubious. |
| 19680 | Maybe all evidence consists of beliefs, rather than of facts [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have been attracted to the view that, strictly speaking, what counts as evidence is not a set of physical objects or even experiences, but rather a set of believed propositions. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: This may be right. However, as always, I think animals are a key test. Do animals respond to evidence? Even if they did, they might need to 'make sense' of what they experienced, and even formulate a non-linguistic proposition. |
| 19681 | If all evidence is propositional, what is the evidence for the proposition? Do we face a regress? [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Taking evidence as propositional may trade one problem for another. If the bloodstain isn't evidence, but 'this is a bloodstain' is evidence, then what serves as evidence for the belief about the bloodstain? Is there an infinite regress? | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I quite like evidence being propositional, but then find this. I'll retreat to my beloved coherence. I do not endorse Sellars's 'only a belief can justify a belief', because raw experience has to be part of what is coherent. |
| 19689 | Several unreliable witnesses can give good support, if they all say the same thing [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: The testimony of a number of independent witnesses, none of them particularly reliable, who give substantially the same account of some event, may provide a strong argument in its favor. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Testimonial') | |
| A reaction: A striking point. It obviously works well for panicking people in a crowd during an incident. Does it also apply to independent scientists who are known to cheat? They may not collaborate, but may all want the same result. |
| 19683 | Narrow evidentialism relies wholly on propositions; the wider form includes other items [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Evidentialism comes in both narrow and wide forms depending on whether evidence is taken to consist only of propositions or of a wider range of items. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Conee and Feldman for the wide view, which is not restricted to beliefs] You can hardly rely on occurrent beliefs as evidence, so we often have good knowledge with forgotten justification. But such knowledge has been 'weakened'. |
| 19685 | Falsificationism would be naive if even a slight discrepancy in evidence killed a theory [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Data do not quite speak for themselves, which speaks against a naive form of falsificationism according to which even the slightest mismatch between theory and evidence suffices to overturn a theory. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Robert Boyle wisely ignoring some data to get a good fit for his graph] |
| 7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
| From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |
| 23569 | The only just cause for a war is a wrong received [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: There is a single and only just cause for commencing a war, namely, a wrong received. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.170), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 04 | |
| A reaction: Walzer affirms this as one the principles of international law. In particular, mere differences of religion or politics cannot justify a war. The tricky bit is when the participants don't agree on the severity of the wrong. |
| 23601 | Leaders can only attack foreigners who have done wrong (as with their own subjects) [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: A political leader cannot have greater authority over foreigners than over his own subjects; but he may not draw the sword against his own subjects unless they have done wrong; therefore he can only do so against foreigners in the same circumstances. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.303), quoted by Jeff McMahan - Killing in War 1.4 | |
| A reaction: The question would then be whether they have 'done some wrong' against this leader, or against some other people (such as their fellow citizens). That would be the 'intervention' justification. Are they engaged in the wrong, or responsible for it? |
| 23566 | Princes should not justify a war to their subjects, and doing so would undermine the state [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: A prince is not able and ought not always to render reasons for the war to its subjects, and if the subjects cannot serve in the war except they be satisfied of its justice, the state would fall into grave peril. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.176), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 03 | |
| A reaction: This medieval view depends entirely on the absolute sovereignty of princes, and confidence that princes are wise and innately just. No student of history should believe such wicked nonsense. |
| 23576 | Sacking a city is lawful if it motivates the attacking troops [Vitoria] |
| Full Idea: It is not unlawful to put a city to sack, if it is necessary for the conduct of the war …as a spur to the courage of the troops. | |
| From: Francis de Vitoria (On the Law of War [1525], p.184), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 08 | |
| A reaction: Hideous. Presumably this would include raping the women. Could you motivate a football team in a similar way? Or to get your children to pass exams? |