11 ideas
| 17990 | Instances of minimal truth miss out propositions inexpressible in current English [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A standard objection to minimalist truth is the 'incompleteness objection'. Since there are propositions inexpressible in present English the concept of truth isn't captured by all the instances of the Tarski biconditional. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like a good objection. |
| 17988 | Quantification can't all be substitutional; some reference is obviously to objects [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The view that all quantification is substitutional is not very plausible in general. Some uses of quantifiers clearly seem to have the function to make a claim about a domain of objects out there, no matter how they relate to the terms in our language. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Robust realists like myself are hardly going to say that quantification is just an internal language game. |
| 17989 | Since properties have properties, there can be a typed or a type-free theory of them [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Since properties themselves can have properties there is a well-known division in the theory of properties between those who take a typed and those who take a type-free approach. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A typed approach would imply restrictions on what it can be a property of. 'Green' is a property of surfaces, 'dark' is a property of colours. My first reaction is to opt for type-free. |
| 19513 | A contextualist coherentist will say that how strongly a justification must cohere depends on context [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: If you are a coherentist and a contextualist, you'll probably want to hold that how strongly beliefs must cohere with one another in order to count as knowledge (if they are true), or to count as justified, is a contextually variable matter. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: How exciting! He's talking about ME! Context might not only dictate the strength of the coherence, but also the range of beliefs involved. In fact all of Thagard's criteria of coherence may be subject to contextual variation. |
| 19514 | Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: The great rival to contextualism is classical 'invariantism' - invariantism about the truth-conditions [for knowing], combined with variable standards for warranted assertability. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that we might want to assert that someone 'knows' something, when the truth is that they don't. That is, either you know or you don't, but we can bend the rules as to whether we say you know. I take this view to be false. |
| 19515 | We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: We might make the basic contextualist schema more precise ...by saying the change in content will consist in a change in the range of relevant alternatives. Higher standards would discriminate from a broader range of alternatives. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.14) | |
| A reaction: This would handle the 'fake barn' and 'disguised zebra' examples, by saying lower standards do not expect such discriminations. The zebra case has a lower standard than the barn case (because fake barns are the norm here). |
| 19510 | In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: I'm inclined to accept that in certain contexts the standards for knowledge are so low that little more than true belief is required. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: DeRose emphasises that 'a little more' is needed, rather than none. The example given is where 'he knew that p' means little more than 'the information that p was available to him' (in a political scandal). |
| 19516 | Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: While skepticism has drawn much of the attention of contextualists, support for contextualism should also - and perhaps primarily - be looked for in how 'knows' is utilised in non-philosophical conversation. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1016) | |
| A reaction: Contextualists say scepticism is just raising the standards absurdly high. I take it that the ordinary use of the word 'know' is obviously highly contextual, and so varied that I don't see how philosophers could 'regiment' it into invariant form. |
| 19511 | If contextualism is about knowledge attribution, rather than knowledge, then it is philosophy of language [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: Maybe contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge at all, but about knowledge attributions. As such, it is not a piece of epistemology at all, but of philosophy of language. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: DeRose takes this view to be wrong. At the very least this will have to include self-attributions, by the supposed knower, because I might say 'I know that p', meaning 'but only in this rather low-standard context'. |
| 17991 | Holism says language can't be translated; the expressibility hypothesis says everything can [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Holism says that nothing that can be said in one language can be said in another one. The expressibility hypothesis says that everything that can be said in one language can be said in every other one. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Obviously expressibility would only refer to reasonably comprehensive languages (with basic logical connectives, for example). Personally I vote for the expressibility hypothesis, which Hofweber seems to favour. |
| 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'). |