10 ideas
| 14348 | An 'antidote' allows a manifestation to begin, but then blocks it [Corry] |
| Full Idea: An 'antidote' (or 'mask') to a disposition (unlike a 'finkish' one) leaves the disposition intact, but interferes with the causal chain between the disposition and its manifestation so that the manifestation doesn't come about. | |
| From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bird 1997] Thus the disposition of the poison at least begins to manifest, but its disposition to kill is blocked. So what was the disposition of the poison? |
| 14347 | A 'finkish' disposition is one that is lost immediately after the appropriate stimulus [Corry] |
| Full Idea: An object's disposition is said to be 'finkish' if the object loses the disposition after the occurrence of the appropriate stimulus, but before the manifestation has had time to come about. | |
| From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Lewis 1997] An example would be some sort of safety device which only cuts in if the disposition seems about to operate (e.g. turns off electricity). It seems to block analyses of dispositions simply in terms of their outcomes. |
| 14350 | If a disposition is never instantiated, it shouldn't be part of our theory of nature [Corry] |
| Full Idea: If we have no good reason to believe that a disposition is instantiated, then the disposition should play no role in our theorizing about the world. | |
| From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is part of our theory that a substantial lump of uranium will explode, but also that a galaxy-sized lump of uranium would explode. Surely we are committed to the latter, even though it never happens? |
| 19566 | Epistemology does not just concern knowledge; all aspects of cognitive activity are involved [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: Epistemology is not just knowledge. There is enquiring, reasoning, changes of view, beliefs, assumptions, presuppositions, hypotheses, true beliefs, making sense, adequacy, understanding, wisdom, responsible enquiry, and so on. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal [2005], 'What') | |
| A reaction: [abridged] Stop! I give in. His topic is whether truth is central to epistemology. Rivals seem to be knowledge-first, belief-first, and justification-first. I'm inclined to take justification as the central issue. Does it matter? |
| 19568 | Making sense of things, or finding a good theory, are non-truth-related cognitive successes [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: There are cognitive successes that are not obviously truth related, such as the concepts of making sense of the course of experience, and having found an empirically adequate theory. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal [2005], 'Epistemic') | |
| A reaction: He is claiming that truth is not the main aim of epistemology. He quotes Marian David for the rival view. Personally I doubt whether the concepts of 'making sense' or 'empirical adequacy' can be explicated without mentioning truth. |
| 19567 | The 'defeasibility' approach says true justified belief is knowledge if no undermining facts could be known [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: The 'defeasibility' approach says that having knowledge requires, in addition to justified true belief, there being no true information which, if learned, would result in the person in question no longer being justified in believing the claim. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal [2005], 'Epistemic') | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an externalist view, since it depends on information of which the cognizer may be unaware. A defeater may yet have an undiscovered counter-defeater. The only real defeater is the falsehood of the proposition. |
| 19570 | Reliabilism cannot assess the justification for propositions we don't believe [Kvanvig] |
| Full Idea: The most serious problem for reliabilism is that it cannot explain adequately the concept of propositional justification, the kind of justification one might have for a proposition one does not believe, or which one disbelieves. | |
| From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal [2005], Notes 2) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand this (though I pass it on anyway). Why can't the reliabilist just offer a critique of the reliability of the justification available for the dubious proposition? |
| 14351 | Maybe an experiment unmasks an essential disposition, and reveals its regularities [Corry] |
| Full Idea: The dispositional essentialist can argue that what happens in laboratory conditions is that, by controlling external influences, we effectively 'unmask' the relevant dispositions, and thus observe the regularities to which those dispositions give rise. | |
| From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 5) | |
| A reaction: That seems to me to be exactly right, though Corry dislikes it, and even suggests that dispositional essentialist might not like it. |
| 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'). |
| 14346 | Dispositional essentialism says fundamental laws of nature are strict, not ceteris paribus [Corry] |
| Full Idea: Dispositional essentialism implies that the fundamental laws of nature must be strict, not ceteris paribus. | |
| From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: I am not keen on the 'laws' of nature, but since essentialism seems to make them necessary, you can't get stricter than that. |