Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Essay on Probability', 'Content Preservation' and 'Freedom and Action'

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5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification
9382 Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge]
     Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject.
     From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
     A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony
7458 The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking]
     Full Idea: The credibility of a witness is in part a function of the story being reported. When the story claims to have infinite value, the temptation to lie for personal benefit is asymptotically infinite.
     From: report of Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820], Ch.XI) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8
     A reaction: Laplace seems to especially have reports of miracles in mind. This observation certainly dashes any dreams one might have of producing a statistical measure of the reliability of testimony.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
3441 If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace]
     Full Idea: An intelligence knowing at an instant the whole universe could know the movement of the largest bodies and atoms in one formula, provided his intellect were powerful enough to subject all data to analysis. Past and future would be present to his eyes.
     From: Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820]), quoted by Mark Thornton - Do we have free will? p.70
20. Action / A. Definition of Action / 1. Action Theory
20062 If a desire leads to a satisfactory result by an odd route, the causal theory looks wrong [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: If someone wants to kill his uncle to inherit a fortune, and having this desire makes him so agitated that he loses control of his car and kills a pedestrian, who turns out to be his uncle, the conditions of the causal theory seem to be satisfied.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966]), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Deviant'
     A reaction: This line of argument has undermined all sorts of causal theories that were fashionable in the 1960s and 70s. Explanation should lead to understanding, but a deviant causal chain doesn't explain the outcome. The causal theory can be tightened.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / c. Agent causation
20054 There has to be a brain event which is not caused by another event, but by the agent [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: There must be some event A, presumably some cerebral event, which is not caused by any other event, but by the agent.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966], p.20), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 4 'Agent'
     A reaction: I'm afraid this thought strikes me as quaintly ridiculous. What kind of metaphysics can allow causation outside the natural nexus, yet occuring within the physical brain? This is a relic of religious dualism. Let it go.