12 ideas
23551 | It is necessary for a belief that it be held for a length of time [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A mental state cannot count as a belief unless it has a reasonable life expectancy. It must be the sort of thing that one is disposed to assert not only now but in the future too. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 2.3) | |
A reaction: There are obvious counterexamples, where a firm belief is strongly formed, only to be dashed by a counterexample (such as a new witness in court) soon afterwards. That said, this idea is obviously correct. |
23558 | Offering knowledge needs accuracy and sincerity; receiving it needs testimonial justice [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Accuracy and Sincerity sustain trust as regards contributing knowledge to the pool; Testimonial Justice helps sustain trust as regards acquiring knowledge from the pool. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 5.1) | |
A reaction: Fricker's contribution is to show that acquiring knowledge has its own virtues, alongside discovering and communicating it. I take the underlying virtue to be absolute respect for all possible contributors. |
23553 | Testimonial judgement is not logical, but produces reasons and motivations [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Moral/testimonial judgement is non-inferential, uncodifiable, intrinsically motivating, intrinsically reason-giving, and typically has an emotional aspect. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.3) | |
A reaction: Fricker's compressed summary of her findings about testimony. The first words indicate her belief that assessment of testimony is a moral affair. |
23550 | Burge says we are normally a priori entitled to believe testimony [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: In Tyler Burge's view we have an a priori entitlement for believing what others tell us, other things being equal. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 1.3 n11) | |
A reaction: [Burge 'Content Preservation' 1992] Close to Davidson's Charity (that without a default assumption of truth-speaking language won't work at all). Davidson is right about casual conversation, but for important testimony Burge should be more cautious. |
23552 | We assess testimonial probabilities by the speaker, the listener, the facts, and the circumstances [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: A person should receive the word of his interlocutor in the light of the probability that someone like that would (be able and willing to) to tell someone like him the truth about something like this in circumstances like these. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.2) | |
A reaction: That's a pretty good summary of the rational response to testimony. I can't think of any other factors. |
23555 | Assessing credibility involves the impact of both the speaker's and the listener's social identity [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: For a hearer to identify the impact of identity power in their credibility judgements they must be alert to the impact not only of the speaker's social identity, but also the impact of the own social identity on their credibility judgements. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [why are all sentences in academic writing twice as long as they need to be? - that question is deeper than it looks!] This is a salutary warning. Not just 'what are my prejudices?', but also 'what is this person willing to tell a person like me?'. |
23554 | Judgements can be unreflective and non-inferential, yet rational, by being sensitive to experience [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: Our idea of testimonial sensibility is a spontaneous critical sensitivity permanently in training and adapting to experience. …This gives us a picture of how judgements can be rational yet unreflective, critical yet non-inferential. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 3.4) | |
A reaction: Love this. I want to connect human reasoning to good judgement by animals, and I offer the word 'sensible' to bridge the gap. Dogs and scientists can be sensible. Fricker spells out more fully what I have in mind, with reference to testimony. |
23557 | To judge agents in remote times and cultures we need a moral resentment weaker than blame [Fricker,M] |
Full Idea: I think that identifying forms of moral resentment that fall short of blame but which are agent-directed is the key to achieving appropriate moral response across historical and cultural distance. | |
From: Miranda Fricker (Epistemic Injustice [2007], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Very good. Simple blame for horrible actions performed in remote rather horrible societies is pointless. But switching off moral sensibilities when reading history and anthropology looks like a slippery slope, so 'moral resentment' is nice. |
22724 | Good strategies avoid conflict, respond to hostility, forgive, and are clear [Axelrod] |
Full Idea: Successful game strategies avoid unnecessary conflict, are provoked by an uncalled for defection, forgive after a provocation, and behave clearly so the other player can adapt. | |
From: Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Co-Operation [1984], 1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Exactly what you would expect from a nice but successful school teacher. The strategies for success in these games is the same as the rules for educating a person into cooperative behaviour. TIT FOR TAT does all these. |
22725 | When players don't meet again, defection is the best strategy [Axelrod] |
Full Idea: When players will never meet again, the strategy of defection is the only stable strategy. | |
From: Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Co-Operation [1984], 5) | |
A reaction: This gives good grounds for any community's mistrust of transient strangers, such as tourists. And yet any sensible tourist will want communities to trust tourists, and will therefore behave in a reliable way. |
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. |