Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'Epistemic Justification' and 'The Actual and the Virtual'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
We don't want another new set of categories; we want a variety of flexible categories [Deleuze, by May]
     Full Idea: For Deleuze, the task is not one of replacing a single set of categories with another set. It is one of being able to create and move among various sets of categories, and even to cross between them.
     From: report of Gilles Deleuze (The Actual and the Virtual [1977]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.05
     A reaction: This sounds fun, but I'm not clear why we need this anarchic mix of categories. The motto of Deleuze seems to be 'at all costs, keep moving'. He loved the idea of nomads. Is Rimbaud our role model? The influence of Foucault is obvious.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism
'Access' internalism says responsibility needs access; weaker 'mentalism' needs mental justification [Kvanvig]
     Full Idea: Strong 'access' internalism says the justification must be accessible to the person holding the belief (for cognitive duty, or blame), and weaker 'mentalist' internalism just says the justification must supervene on mental features of the individual.
     From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Epistemic Justification [2011], III)
     A reaction: [compressed] I think I'm a strong access internalist. I doubt whether there is a correct answer to any of this, but my conception of someone knowing something involves being able to invoke their reasons for it. Even if they forget the source.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / a. Foundationalism
Strong foundationalism needs strict inferences; weak version has induction, explanation, probability [Kvanvig]
     Full Idea: Strong foundationalists require truth-preserving inferential links between the foundations and what the foundations support, while weaker versions allow weaker connections, such as inductive support, or best explanation, or probabilistic support.
     From: Jonathan Kvanvig (Epistemic Justification [2011], II)
     A reaction: [He cites Alston 1989] Personally I'm a coherentist about justification, but I'm a fan of best explanation, so I'd vote for that. It's just that best explanation is not a very foundationalist sort of concept. Actually, the strong version is absurd.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Nomos is king [Pindar]
     Full Idea: Nomos is king.
     From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
     A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.