17 ideas
| 8877 | We can't attain a coherent system by lopping off any beliefs that won't fit [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Coherence involves the logical, explanatory and probabilistic relations among one's beliefs, but it could not do to attain a tightly iterrelated system by lopping off whatever beliefs refuse to fit. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly right, so the coherentist has to distinguish between lopping off a belief because it is inconvenient (fundamentalists rejecting textual contradictions), and lopping it off because it is wrong (chemists rejecting phlogiston). |
| 18009 | Chomsky established the view that category mistakes are well-formed but meaningless [Chomsky, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: The view of Chomsky in 1957 that category mistakes are syntactically well-formed but meaningless is a very standard one. | |
| From: report of Noam Chomsky (Syntactic Structure [1957]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm going off the idea that they are meaningless, largely because I am beginning to sympathise with the view that any composition of meaningful components is meaningful (even if blatantly false). |
| 4742 | Correspondence may be one-many or many one, as when either p or q make 'p or q' true [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: In Armstrong's version of the correspondence theory, the truth-making relation is not one-one, but one-many or many-one. Thus 'p or q' has two truth makers, p and q. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997], p.129), quoted by Pascal Engel - Truth Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Armstrong deals in universals. He also cites many swans as truth-makers for 'there is a least one black swan'. Not correspondence as we know it, Jim. |
| 8884 | The phenomenal concept of an eleven-dot pattern does not include the concept of eleven [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: You could detect the absence of an eleven-dot pattern without having counted the dots, so your phenomenal concept of that array is not an arithmetical concept, and its content will not yield that its dots do indeed number eleven. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: Sosa is discussing foundational epistemology, but this draws attention to the gulf that has to be leaped by structuralists. If eleven is not derived from the pattern, where does it come from? Presumably two eleven-dotters are needed, to map them. |
| 9497 | Without modality, Armstrong falls back on fictionalism to support counterfactual laws [Bird on Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong has difficulty explaining how laws entail regularities. There is no real modality in the basic components of the world, but he wants to support counterfactuals. His official position is a kind of fictionalism. | |
| From: comment on David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997], 49-51) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 4.4.4 | |
| A reaction: Armstrong seems to be up against the basic problems that laws won't explain anything if they are merely regularities (assuming they are not decrees of a supernatural force). |
| 15550 | Properties are contingently existing beings with multiple locations in space and time [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong has a distinctive conception of (fundamental) properties as contingently existing beings with multiple locations in space and time. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997]) by David Lewis - A world of truthmakers? p.220 | |
| A reaction: Armstrong tries to get a naturalistically founded platonism (which he claims is Aristotelian), but the idea that one thing can be multiply located strikes me as daft (especially if the number of its locations increases or decreases). |
| 4743 | The truth-maker for a truth must necessitate that truth [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The truth-maker for a truth must necessitate that truth. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997], p.115), quoted by Pascal Engel - Truth Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Armstrong's 'truth-make principle'. It seems to be a necessity which is neither natural nor analytic, making it metaphysically necessary. Or is it part of the definition of truth? |
| 8878 | It is acceptable to say a supermarket door 'knows' someone is approaching [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: I am quite flexible on epistemic terminology, and am even willing to grant that a supermarket door can 'know' that someone is approaching. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this amazing admission to be a hallmark of externalism. Sosa must extend this to thermostats. So flowers know the sun has come out. This is knowledge without belief. Could the door ever be 'wrong'? |
| 8880 | In reducing arithmetic to self-evident logic, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: In trying to reduce arithmetic to self-evident logical axioms, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.7) | |
| A reaction: I have heard Frege called "the greatest of all rationalist philosophers". However, the apparent reduction of arithmetic to analytic truths played into the hands of logical positivists, who could then marginalise arithmetic. |
| 8881 | Most of our knowledge has insufficient sensory support [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Almost nothing that one knows of history or geography or science has adequate sensory support, present or even recalled. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems a bit glib, and may be false. The main issue to which this refers is, of course, induction, which (almost by definition) is a supposedly empirical process which goes beyond the empirical evidence. |
| 8882 | Perception may involve thin indexical concepts, or thicker perceptual concepts [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between having just an indexical concept which one can apply to a perceptual characteristic (just saying 'this is thus'), and having a thicker perceptual concept of that characteristic. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: Both of these, of course, would precede any categorial concepts that enabled one to identify the characteristic or the object. This is a ladder foundationalists must climb if they are to reach the cellar of basic beliefs. |
| 8883 | Do beliefs only become foundationally justified if we fully attend to features of our experience? [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Are foundationally justified beliefs perhaps those that result from attending to our experience and to features of it or in it? | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: A promising suggestion. I do think our ideas acquire a different epistmological status once we have given them our full attention, though is that merely full consciousness, or full thoughtful evaluation? The latter I take to be what matters. Cf Idea 2414. |
| 8885 | Some features of a thought are known directly, but others must be inferred [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Some intrinsic features of our thoughts are attributable to them directly, or foundationally, while others are attributable only based on counting or inference. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: In practice the brain combines the two at a speed which makes the distinction impossible. I'll show you ten dot-patterns: you pick out the sixer. The foundationalist problem is that only those drained of meaning could be foundational. |
| 8876 | Much propositional knowledge cannot be formulated, as in recognising a face [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: Much of our propositional knowledge is not easily formulable, as when a witness looking at a police lineup may know what the culprit's face looks like. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This is actually a very helpful defence of foundationalism, because it shows that we will accept perceptual experiences as knowledge when they are not expressed as explicit propositions. Davidson (Idea 8801), for example, must deal with this difficulty. |
| 8879 | Fully comprehensive beliefs may not be knowledge [Sosa] |
| Full Idea: One's beliefs can be comprehensively coherent without amounting to knowledge. | |
| From: Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Beliefs that are fully foundational or reliably sourced may also fail to be knowledge. I take it that any epistemological theory must be fallibilist (Idea 6898). Rational coherentism will clearly be sensitive to error. |
| 18007 | Syntax is independent of semantics; sentences can be well formed but meaningless [Chomsky, by Magidor] |
| Full Idea: In 1957 Chomsky argues that syntax is an independent field from semantics. …To support this claim he argues that the now-famous category mistake 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously' is grammatical but meaningless. | |
| From: report of Noam Chomsky (Syntactic Structure [1957]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm tempted by the thought that this famous sentence actually is meaningful, although the meaning is fragmentary, and any proposition which can be assembled from it appears to be blatantly false. |
| 4798 | In recent writings, Armstrong makes a direct identification of necessitation with causation [Armstrong, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In recent writings, Armstrong makes a direct identification of necessitation with causation. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §6.3.3 | |
| A reaction: Obviously logical necessity is not causal, but as a proposal for simplifying accounts of necessity in nature, this is wonderfully simple and appealing. Is his proposal an elevation of causation, or a degradation of necessity? |