Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Explanations', 'Reasons and Persons' and 'Open Society and Its Enemies:Hegel and Marx'

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4 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

5451	Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress [Popper, by Mautner]
	Full Idea: Karl Popper vehemently rejected the essentialism which underpins Plato and Aristotle, taking it to be a major obstacle to political, moral and scientific progress.
	From: report of Karl Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies:Hegel and Marx [1945]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179
	A reaction: This makes Popper sound like an existentialist, which seems unlikely. Modern essentialism would say the opposite about science - that hunting for external imposed laws is a red herring, and we should try to understand essences.

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / c. Aim of beliefs

3570	Maybe knowledge is belief which 'tracks' the truth [Nozick, by Williams,M]
	Full Idea: Nozick suggests that knowledge is just belief which 'tracks the truth' (hence leaving out justification).
	From: report of Robert Nozick (Philosophical Explanations [1981]) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch. 2

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 4. Tracking the Facts

2748	A true belief isn't knowledge if it would be believed even if false. It should 'track the truth' [Nozick, by Dancy,J]
	Full Idea: Nozick says Gettier cases aren't knowledge because the proposition would be believed even if false. Proper justification must be more sensitive to the truth ("track the truth").
	From: report of Robert Nozick (Philosophical Explanations [1981], 3.1) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 3.1
	A reaction: This is a bad idea. I see a genuine tree in my garden and believe it is there, so I know it. That I might have believed it if I was in virtually reality, or observing a mirror, won't alter that.

23. Ethics / E. Utilitarianism / 1. Utilitarianism

9762	We should focus less on subjects of experience, and more on the experiences themselves [Parfit]
	Full Idea: It becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves.
	From: Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons [1984], §116)
	A reaction: This pinpoints how Parfit moves from a view of persons in terms of continuity of consciousness to a utilitarian morality. It brings out nicely what is wrong with utilitarianism - the reductio of a great ball of nice experiences, with no one having them.