Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Reply to Fourth Objections', 'Some Puzzles of Ground' and 'Reliabilism'

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6 ideas

4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 3. Many-Valued Logic
Strong Kleene disjunction just needs one true disjunct; Weak needs the other to have some value [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Under strong Kleene tables, a disjunction will be true if one of the disjuncts is true, regardless of whether or not the other disjunct has a truth-value; under the weak table it is required that the other disjunct also have a value. So for other cases.
     From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], n7)
     A reaction: [see also p.111 of Fine's article] The Kleene tables seem to be the established form of modern three-valued logic, with the third value being indeterminate.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
Formal grounding needs transitivity of grounding, no self-grounding, and the existence of both parties [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The general formal principles of grounding are Transitivity (A«B, B«C/A«C: if A helps ground B and B helps C, then A helps C), Irreflexivity (A«A/absurd: A can't ground itself) and Factivity (A«B/A; A«/B: for grounding both A and B must be the case).
     From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], 4)
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge
Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability [Comesaña]
     Full Idea: The best definition of reliabilism seems to be: the agent has evidence, and bases the belief on the evidence, and the actual conditional reliability of the belief on the evidence is high enough.
     From: Juan Comesaña (Reliabilism [2011], 4.4)
     A reaction: This is Comesaña's own theory, derived from Alston 1998, and based on conditional probabilities.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / b. Anti-reliabilism
In a sceptical scenario belief formation is unreliable, so no beliefs at all are justified? [Comesaña]
     Full Idea: If the processes of belief-formation are unreliable (perhaps in a sceptical scenario), then reliabilism has the consequence that those victims can never have justified beliefs (which Sosa calls the 'new evil demon problem').
     From: Juan Comesaña (Reliabilism [2011], 4.1)
     A reaction: That may be the right outcome. Could you have mathematical knowledge in a sceptical scenario? But that would be different processes. If I might be a brain in a vat, then it's true that I have no perceptual knowledge.
How do we decide which exact process is the one that needs to be reliable? [Comesaña]
     Full Idea: The reliabilist has the problem of finding a principled way of selecting, for each token-process of belief formation, the type whose reliability ratio must be high enough for the belief to be justified.
     From: Juan Comesaña (Reliabilism [2011], 4.3)
     A reaction: The question is which exact process I am employing for some visual knowledge (and how the process should be described). Seeing, staring, squinting, glancing.... This seems to be called the 'generality problem'.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 6. Conceptual Dualism
The concept of mind excludes body, and vice versa [Descartes]
     Full Idea: The concept of body includes nothing at all which belongs to the mind, and the concept of mind includes nothing at all which belongs to the body.
     From: René Descartes (Reply to Fourth Objections [1641], 225)
     A reaction: A headache? Hunger? The mistake, I think, is to regard the mind as entirely conscious, thus creating a sharp boundary between two aspects of our lives. As shown by blindsight, I take many of my central mental operations to be pre- or non-conscious.