Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Letter to Pythocles' and 'Justified Belief as Responsible Belief'

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8 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence

12801	Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
	Full Idea: Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
	A reaction: I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / c. Disjunctivism

12800	Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
	Full Idea: Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
	A reaction: I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 2. Pragmatic justification

12802	We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
	Full Idea: It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
	A reaction: [See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.

12803	Justification comes from acceptable procedures, given practical constraints [Foley]
	Full Idea: One justifiably believes a proposition if one has an epistemically rational belief that one's procedures with respect to it have been acceptable, given practical limitations, and one's goals.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.322)
	A reaction: I quite like this, except that it is too individualistic. My goals, and my standards of acceptability decree whether I know? I don't see the relevance of goals; only a pragmatist would mention such a thing. Standards of acceptability are social.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / c. Against best explanation

21386	We should accept as explanations all the plausible ways in which something could come about [Epicurus]
	Full Idea: The phases of the Moon could happen in all the ways [at least four] which the phenomena in our experience suggest for the explanation of this kind of thing - as long as one is not so enamoured of unique explanations as to groundlessly reject the others.
	From: Epicurus (Letter to Pythocles [c.292 BCE], 94)
	A reaction: Very interesting, for IBE. While you want to embrace the 'best', it is irrational to reject all of the other candidates, simply because you want a single explanation, if there are no good grounds for the rejection.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

7903	The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
	Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
	From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
	A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').

27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 1. Cosmology

14051	A cosmos is a collection of stars and an earth, with some sort of boundary, movement and shape [Epicurus]
	Full Idea: A cosmos is a circumscribed portion of the heavens containing stars and an earth; it is separated from the unlimited, with a boundary which is rare or dense; it is revolving or stationary; it is round or triangular, or some shape. All these are possible.
	From: Epicurus (Letter to Pythocles [c.292 BCE], 88)
	A reaction: Notice that there seem to exist the 'heavens' which extend beyond the cosmos. See Idea 14036, saying that there are many other cosmoi in the heavens.

28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 3. Deism

1828	God does not intervene in heavenly movements, but is beyond all action and perfectly happy [Epicurus]
	Full Idea: Let us beware of making the Deity interpose in heavenly movements, for that being we ought to suppose exempt from all occupation and perfectly happy.
	From: Epicurus (Letter to Pythocles [c.292 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 10.25