Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Saundaranandakavya' and 'The Raft and the Pyramid'

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10 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy

7910	Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake.

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

8797	The negation of all my beliefs about my current headache would be fully coherent [Sosa]
	Full Idea: If I have a headache, I could have a set of beliefs that I do not have a headache, that I am not in pain, that no one is in pain, and so on. The resulting system of beliefs would cohere as fully as does my actual system of beliefs.
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §9)
	A reaction: I think this is a misunderstanding of coherentism. Beliefs are not to be formulated through a process of coherence, but are evaluated that way. A belief that I have headache just arrives; I then see that its denial is incoherent, so I accept it.

12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 1. Common Sense

8794	There are very few really obvious truths, and not much can be proved from them [Sosa]
	Full Idea: Radical foundationalism suffers from two weaknesses: there are not so many perfectly obvious truths as Descartes thought; and if we restrict ourselves to what it truly obvious, very little supposed common sense knowledge can be proved.
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §3)
	A reaction: It is striking how few examples can ever be found of self-evident a priori truths. However, if there are self-evident truths about direct experience (pace Descartes), that would give us more than enough.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / e. Pro-foundations

8796	A single belief can trail two regresses, one terminating and one not [Sosa]
	Full Idea: A single belief can trail at once regresses of both sorts: one terminating and one not.
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §6)
	A reaction: This makes foundationalism possible, while admitting the existence of regresses. It is a good point, and triumphalist anti-foundationalists can't just point out a regress and then smugly troop off to the pub.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / f. Foundationalism critique

8799	If mental states are not propositional, they are logically dumb, and cannot be foundations [Sosa]
	Full Idea: If a mental state is not propositional, then how can it possibly serve as a foundation for belief? How can one infer or justify anything on the basis of a state that, having no propositional content, must be logically dumb?
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §11)
	A reaction: This may be the best objection to foundationalism. McDowell tries to argue that conceptual content is inherent in perception, thus giving the beginnings of inbuilt propositional content. But an organism awash with bare experiences knows nothing.

8795	Mental states cannot be foundational if they are not immune to error [Sosa]
	Full Idea: If a mental state provides no guarantee against error, then it cannot serve as a foundation for knowledge.
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §4)
	A reaction: That assumes that knowledge entails certainty, which I am sure it should not. On a fallibilist account, a foundation could be incredibly secure, despite a barely imaginable scenario in which it turned out to be false.

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 2. Causal Justification

8798	Vision causes and justifies beliefs; but to some extent the cause is the justification [Sosa]
	Full Idea: Visual experience is recognized as both the cause and the justification of our visual beliefs. But these are not wholly independent. Presumably the justification that something is red derives partly from the fact that it originates in visual experience.
	From: Ernest Sosa (The Raft and the Pyramid [1980], §10)
	A reaction: Yes, but the fact that certain visual experiences originate in dreams is taken as grounds for denying their truth, not affirming it. So why do we distinguish them? I am thinking that only in the 'space of reasons' can a cause become a justification.

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 1. God

6011	There is a remote first god (the Good), and a second god who organises the material world [Numenius, by O'Meara]
	Full Idea: Numenius argues that material reality depends on intelligible being, which depends on a first god - the Good - which is difficult to grasp, but which inspires a second god to imitate it, turning to matter and organizing it as the world.
	From: report of Numenius (fragments/reports [c.160]) by Dominic J. O'Meara - Numenius
	A reaction: The interaction problem comes either between the two gods, or between the second god and the world. The argument may have failed to catch on for long when people scented an infinite regress lurking in the middle of it.

29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism

7909	The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven

7908	At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff.