Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Explanations', 'Postscripts on supervenience' and 'Types and Ontology'

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5 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
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?
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.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 1. Categories
Categories can't overlap; they are either disjoint, or inclusive [Sommers, by Westerhoff]
     Full Idea: Fred Sommers, in his treatment of types, says that two ontological categories cannot overlap; they are either disjoint, or one properly includes the other. This is sometimes referred to as Sommers' Law.
     From: report of Fred Sommers (Types and Ontology [1963], p.355) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §24
     A reaction: The 'types', of course, go back to Bertrand Russell's theory of types, which is important in discussions of ontological categories. Carnap pursued it, trying to derive ontological categories from grammatical categories. 85% agree with Sommers.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / c. Aim of beliefs
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
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.