9 ideas
| 7771 | We need 'events' to explain adverbs, which are adjectival predicates of events [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: To deal with the truth conditions for some adverbs, Davidson introduced a domain of 'events', and made adverbs into adjectival predicates of events. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a striking case of a procedure of which I heartily disapprove - deriving you ontology from your semantics. Do all languages have adverbs? |
| 8860 | Language-learning is not good enough evidence for the existence of events [Yablo on Davidson] |
| Full Idea: One needs a better reason for believing in events than the help they provide with language-learning. | |
| From: comment on Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967], §8) by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence §8 | |
| A reaction: I can almost believe in micro-events at the quantum level, but I cannot believe that the Renaissance (made of events within events within events) is an event, even though I may 'quantify over it', and discuss its causes and effects. |
| 15002 | If the best theory of adverbs refers to events, then our ontology should include events [Davidson, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Davidson argued that the best linguistic theory of adverbial modification assigns truth-conditions quantifying over events; thus we must embrace an ontology of events. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (The Logical Form of Action Sentences [1967]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 07.8 | |
| A reaction: Sider is critical and I agree. This is just the sort of linguistic manoeuvre that gets philosophy a bad name. As Yablo remarks, we have a terrible tendency to want to thingify everything. |
| 8808 | Involuntary beliefs can still be evaluated [Feldman/Conee] |
| Full Idea: Examples confirm that beliefs may be both involuntary and subject to epistemic evaluation. | |
| From: R Feldman / E Conee (Evidentialism [1985], II) | |
| A reaction: This is an extremely important point, which summarises the situation with beliefs that arise from (apparent) immediate perception. A belief cannot possibly be knowledge if it has been triggered, but no effort was made to evaluate it. |
| 8807 | Evidentialism is the view that justification is determined by the quality of the evidence [Feldman/Conee] |
| Full Idea: What we call 'evidentialism' is the view that the epistemic justification of a belief is determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief. | |
| From: R Feldman / E Conee (Evidentialism [1985], I) | |
| A reaction: The immediate question is whether the believer knows the quality of their evidence. A detective might not recognise the crucial clue (like the dog not barking). The definition of 'quality' had better not turn out to be circular. Forgotten evidence? |
| 8809 | Beliefs should fit evidence, and if you ought to believe it, then you are justified [Feldman/Conee] |
| Full Idea: One epistemically ought to have the doxastic attitudes that fit one's evidence. Being epistemically obligatory is equivalent to being epistemically justified. | |
| From: R Feldman / E Conee (Evidentialism [1985], III) | |
| A reaction: It is normal for someone to refuse to accept something, when another person believes the evidence is overwhelming. Evaluation of evidence must include an assessment of what other evidence might turn up. |
| 8810 | If someone rejects good criticism through arrogance, that is irrelevant to whether they have knowledge [Feldman/Conee] |
| Full Idea: If an arrogant young physicist refuses to recognise valid criticisms from a senior colleague, his or her character has nothing to do with the epistemic status of their belief in the theory. | |
| From: R Feldman / E Conee (Evidentialism [1985], III) | |
| A reaction: This rejects the idea that epistemic justification is essentially a matter of virtues and vices of character. That view is a version of reliabilism, and hence of externalism. I agree with the criticism, but epistemic virtues are still significant. |
| 20696 | We can approach knowledge of God by negative attributes [Maimonides] |
| Full Idea: You will come nearer to the knowledge and comprehension of God by the negative attributes. | |
| From: Moses Maimonides (The Guide of the Perplexed [1190], p.86), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 2 'Negation' | |
| A reaction: Illustrated by grasping what a ship is by eliminating other categories it might belong to. The assumption is that you have a known and finite list - something like Aristotle's categories. Maimonides fears we know too little for positive attributes. |
| 19085 | Thinking of God as resembling humans results from a bad translation of Genesis 1:26 [Maimonides] |
| Full Idea: Mistranslation of 'image' has been the cause of a crass anthropomorphism because of the verse 'Let us make man in Our image after Our likeness' (Gen.1:26). They think God has the shape and outline of man, ..with face and hands like themselves. | |
| From: Moses Maimonides (The Guide of the Perplexed [1190], I.1) | |
| A reaction: It's interesting that Michelangelo still visualises God as an old man. The idea won't go away, presumably because God is understood as a 'person', in Locke's sense, though of a very special kind. |