4 ideas
| 8431 | Problems with Goodman's view of counterfactuals led to a radical approach from Stalnaker and Lewis [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: In reaction to two classic difficulties in Goodman's treatment of counterfactuals - the contenability problem and the explication of law - a radically different approach was instigated by Stalnaker (1968) and has been developed by Lewis. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Lewis's Programme [1987], p208) | |
| A reaction: [I record this for study purposes] |
| 8825 | It seems impossible to logically deduce physical knowledge from indubitable sense data [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed on all hands that the classical epistemological project, conceived as one of deductively validating physical knowledge from indubitable sensory data, cannot succeed. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (What is 'naturalized epistemology'? [1988], p.304) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Enlightenment Project', which had a parallel in morality. Kim refers to the difficulty as 'The Humean Predicament'. Hume also hoped that induction might be deductive. One obvious move is to expand from 'deduction' to 'reason'. |
| 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'). |
| 8432 | Analyse counterfactuals using causation, not the other way around [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: In my view, counterfactual conditionals are analysed in terms of causation. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Lewis's Programme [1987], p.208) | |
| A reaction: This immediately sounds more plausible to me. Counterfactual claims are rather human, whereas causation (if we accept it) seems a feature of nature. The key question is whether some sort of 'dependency' is a feature of counterfactuals. |