Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Justified Belief as Responsible Belief' and 'The Sense of Reality'

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7 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 1. History of Ideas

7460	The great moments are the death of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Romanticism [Berlin, by Watson]
	Full Idea: Berlin says there were three great turning points: after the death of Aristotle (when Greek schools focused on the inner life of individuals, instead of as social beings), Machiavelli's division of political and individual virtues, and Romanticism.
	From: report of Isaiah Berlin (The Sense of Reality [1996], p.168-9) by Peter Watson - Ideas Intro
	A reaction: I have the impression that Machiavelli introduced a new hard-boiled ethics, which dominated the sixteenth century, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth century they fought back, and Machiavellianism turned out to be just a phase.

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence

12801	Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
	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.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
	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!

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / c. Disjunctivism

12800	Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
	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.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
	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.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 2. Pragmatic justification

12802	We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
	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.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
	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.

12803	Justification comes from acceptable procedures, given practical constraints [Foley]
	Full Idea: One justifiably believes a proposition if one has an epistemically rational belief that one's procedures with respect to it have been acceptable, given practical limitations, and one's goals.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.322)
	A reaction: I quite like this, except that it is too individualistic. My goals, and my standards of acceptability decree whether I know? I don't see the relevance of goals; only a pragmatist would mention such a thing. Standards of acceptability are social.

25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles

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.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure

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.