Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Explanations', 'works' and 'Comments on a Certain Broadsheet'

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6 ideas

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

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities

2602	What experience could prove 'If a=c and b=c then a=b'? [Descartes]
	Full Idea: Please tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming some common notion to the effect that 'things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other'.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.366)

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.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / c. Nativist concepts

2600	The mind's innate ideas are part of its capacity for thought [Descartes]
	Full Idea: I have never written or taken the view that the mind requires innate ideas which are something distinct from its own faculty of thinking.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)

2601	Qualia must be innate, because physical motions do not contain them [Descartes]
	Full Idea: The ideas of pains, colours, sounds etc. must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
	A reaction: Simple and brilliant! We know perfectly well that there is no redness zooming through the air from a tomato (or the air would be pink!). Redness occurs when the light arrives, so we add the redness, so it is innate.

29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / d. Heresy

16714	The state should kill blasphemous heretics [Erasmus]
	Full Idea: It is necessary for the preservation of the state to kill heretics that are blasphemous and seditious.
	From: Desiderius Erasmus (works [1506]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2
	A reaction: He was much more tolerant of heretics who kept quiet.