Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Good and Evil', 'Knowledge' and 'The Raft and the Pyramid'

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8 ideas

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.

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge

19724	Belief is knowledge if it is true, certain, and obtained by a reliable process [Ramsey]
	Full Idea: I have always said that a belief was knowledge if it was (i) true, (ii) certain, (iii) obtained by a reliable process.
	From: Frank P. Ramsey (Knowledge [1929]), quoted by Juan Comesaña - Reliabilism 2
	A reaction: Remarkable to be addressing the Gettier problem at that date, but Russell had flirted with the problem. Ramsey says the production of the belief must be reliable, rather than the justification for the belief. Note that he wants certainty.

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good

22489	'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot]
	Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'.
	From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro
	A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it.