21 ideas
3695 | Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: My conviction is that philosophy is a priori if it is anything. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], Pref) | |
A reaction: How about knowledge of a posteriori necessities, such as the length of a metre, known by observation of the standard metre in Paris? |
3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: If one never in fact grasps any necessary connections between anything, it is hard to see what reasoning could possible amount to. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.3) |
3700 | Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The epistemic authority of coherence cannot itself be established by appeal to coherence. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7 n50) | |
A reaction: The standard approach amongs modern philosophers (following, I think, Kripke) is to insist on 'intuition' as basic, despite all its problems. I have no better suggestion. |
3697 | The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: While necessity and possibility are interdefinable concepts, it is the idea of a possible world or situation which is intuitively primary. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.3) |
3704 | Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Moderate rationalism preserves a priori justification, but rejects the idea that it is infallible. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) |
3707 | Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Criteria or rules do not somehow apply to themselves. They must be judged by the sort of rational insight or intuition that the rationalist is advocating. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §5.2) |
8830 | A belief can be justified when the person has forgotten the evidence for it [Goldman] |
Full Idea: A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: This is a central problem for any very literal version of internalism. The fully rationalist view (to which I incline) will be that the cognizer must make a balanced assessment of whether they once had the evidence. Were my teachers any good? |
8832 | If justified beliefs are well-formed beliefs, then animals and young children have them [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], III) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a key hallmark of the externalist view of knowledge. Personally I think we should tell the animals that they have got true beliefs, but that they aren't bright enough to aspire to 'knowledge'. Be grateful for what you've got. |
3696 | A priori justification requires understanding but no experience [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2) | |
A reaction: Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori. |
3703 | You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Moderate empiricists try unsuccessfully to explain a priori justification by means of analyticity, and radical empiricist attempts to dispense with a priori justification end in nearly total scepticism. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) | |
A reaction: My working theory is neither of the above. Because we can abstract from the physical world, we can directly see/experience generalised (and even necessary) truths about it. |
3706 | A priori justification can vary in degree [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: A priori justification can vary in degree. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.5) | |
A reaction: This idea, which I trace back at least to Russell, seems to me one of breakthrough ideas in modern thought. It means that a priori knowledge can be reconnected with a posteriori knowledge. |
3699 | The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The attempt to prove physical statements on the basis of sensory evidence is defeated by the problem of induction. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.6) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a logician's use of the word 'prove', which would be a pretty forlorn hope. Insofar as experience proves anything, fully sensing a chair proves its existence. |
3701 | Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: An externalist theory of epistemic justification or warrant need not involve the possession by the believer of anything like a reason for thinking that their belief is true. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
A reaction: That is the problem with externalism. If the believer does not have a reason, then why would they believe? Externalists are interesting on justification, but daft about belief. Why do I believe I know something, when I can't recall how I learnt it? |
8829 | Justification depends on the reliability of its cause, where reliable processes tend to produce truth [Goldman] |
Full Idea: The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the processes that cause it, where (provisionally) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: Goldman's original first statement of reliabilism, now the favourite version of externalism. The obvious immediate problem is when a normally very reliable process goes wrong. Wise people still get it wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. |
3702 | Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: If externalism is the final story, we have no reason to think that any of our beliefs are true, which amounts to a very strong and intuitively implausible version of scepticism. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
A reaction: A very good point. I may, like a cat, know many things, with good external support, but as soon as I ask sceptical questions, I sink without trace if I lack internal reasons. |
3709 | Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7) |
8831 | Introspection is really retrospection; my pain is justified by a brief causal history [Goldman] |
Full Idea: Introspection should be regarded as a form of retrospection. Thus, a justified belief that I am 'now' in pain gets its justificational status from a relevant, though brief, causal history. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (What is Justified Belief? [1976], II) | |
A reaction: He cites Hobbes and Ryle as having held this view. See Idea 6668. I am unclear why the history must be 'causal'. I may not know the cause of the pain. I may not believe an event which causes a proposition, or I may form a false belief from it. |
3708 | All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: I assume that the contents of thought can be accounted for by appeal to just two general sorts of ingredient - properties (including relations) and indexicals. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §6.7) | |
A reaction: I don't accept that relations are a type of properties. Since he does not include objects or substances, I take it that he considers objects to be bundles of properties. |
3698 | Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation would be better described as the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning and belief. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.5) | |
A reaction: Not necessarily. It is not incoherent to believe that the target people have a coherent and stable system of meaning and belief, but finding its translation indeterminate because it is holistic, and rooted in a way of life. |
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. |