Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Explanations', 'Postscripts on supervenience' and 'On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals'

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6 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience

13745	Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim]
	Full Idea: It is a mistake, or at least misleading, to think of supervenience itself as a special and distinctive type of dependence relation, alongside causal dependence, mereological dependence, semantic dependence, and others.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
	A reaction: The point, I take it, is that supervenience is something which requires explanation, rather than being a conclusion to the debate. Why are statues beautiful? Why do brains generate minds?

13746	Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation [Kim]
	Full Idea: Supervenience itself is not an explanatory relation, not a 'deep' metaphysical relation; rather it is a 'surface' relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
	A reaction: I think the underlying idea here is that supervenience appeals to the Humean view of physical laws as mere regularities, but it is no good for those who seek underlying mechanisms to explain the patterns and regularities. Humeans are wrong.

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / c. Truth-function conditionals

14288	'If A,B' affirms that A⊃B, and also that this wouldn't change if A were certain [Jackson, by Edgington]
	Full Idea: According to Jackson, in asserting 'If A,B' the speaker expresses his belief that A⊃B, and also indicates that this belief is 'robust' with respect to the antecedent A - the speaker would not abandon A⊃B if he were to learn that A.
	From: report of Frank Jackson (On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals [1979]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.2
	A reaction: The point is that you must not believe A⊃B solely on the dubious grounds of ¬A. This is 'to ensure an assertable conditional is fit for modus ponens' - that is, that you really will affirm B when you learn that A is true. Nice idea.

13769	Conditionals are truth-functional, but should only be asserted when they are confident [Jackson, by Edgington]
	Full Idea: Jackson holds that conditionals are truth-functional, but are governed by rules of assertability, rather like 'but' compared to 'and'. The belief must be 'robust' - the speaker would not abandon his belief that A⊃B if he were to learn that A.
	From: report of Frank Jackson (On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals [1979]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals 17.3.2
	A reaction: This seems to spell out more precisely the pragmatic approach to conditionals pioneered by Grice, in Idea 13767. The idea is make conditionals 'fit for modus ponens'. They mustn't just be based on a belief that ¬A.

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.