9 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 22881 | Should we value environmental systems for human benefit, or for their own sake? [Hildebrand] |
| Full Idea: There is a long-running debate between anthropo-centrists and eco-centrists. The latter believe that humans must protect environmental systems because they have intrinsic value; the former argue that human interests are the root of all value. | |
| From: David Hildebrand (Dewey [2008], 8 'Environ') | |
| A reaction: How many tigers would you kill to save a human life? Would you allow a human to die in order to save a species from extinction? It is very hard to think that the Earth has great value if humans are removed from it! |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |