12801
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Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
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A reaction:
I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!
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16051
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Life has a new supervenient relation, which alters its underlying physical events [Morgan,L]
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Full Idea:
When some new kind of relatedness is supervenient (say at the level of life), the way in which the physical events which are involved run their course is different in virtue of its presence.
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From:
Lloyd Morgan (Emergent Evolution [1923], pp.15-16), quoted by Terence Horgan - From Supervenience to Superdupervenience 1
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A reaction:
This is a clear assertion of 'downward causation' at the first introduction of 'supervenience', supporting 'emergentism' about life and mind. That is, the newly-emerged feature has new causal powers that affect the physical system from outside. Wrong!
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12800
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Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
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Full Idea:
Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
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A reaction:
I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.
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12802
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We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
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Full Idea:
It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
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From:
Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
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A reaction:
[See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.
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