5 ideas
| 8616 | How can multiple statements, none of which is tenable, conjoin to yield a tenable conclusion? [Elgin] |
| Full Idea: How can multiple statements, none of which is tenable, conjoin to yield a tenable conclusion? How can their relation to other less than tenable enhance their tenability? | |
| From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.157) | |
| A reaction: Her example is witnesses to a crime. Bayes Theorem appears to deal with individual items. "The thief had green hair" becomes more likely with multiple testimony. This is a very persuasive first step towards justification as coherence. |
| 8617 | Statements that are consistent, cotenable and supportive are roughly true [Elgin] |
| Full Idea: The best explanation of coherence (where the components of a coherent account must be mutually consistent, cotenable and supportive) is that the account is at least roughly true. | |
| From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.158) | |
| A reaction: Note that she is NOT employing a coherence account of truth (which I take to be utterly wrong). It is notoriously difficult to define coherence. If the components must be 'tenable', they have epistemic status apart from their role in coherence. |
| 10494 | Several words may label a category; one word can name several categories; some categories lack words [Ellen] |
| Full Idea: Words are not always a good guide to the existence of categories: there may be several words which label the same categories (synonyms). and the same word can be used for quite different ideas. Some categories may exist without being labelled. | |
| From: Roy Ellen (Categories, Classification, Cogn. Anthropology [2006], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of point which seems obvious to anyone outside philosophy, but which philosophers seem to find difficult to accept. Philosophers should pay much more attention to animals, and to illiterate peoples. Varieties of rice can lack labels. |
| 8618 | Coherence is a justification if truth is its best explanation (not skill in creating fiction) [Elgin] |
| Full Idea: The best explanation of the coherence of 'Middlemarch' lies in the novelist's craft. Coherence conduces to epistemic acceptability only when the best explanation of the coherence of a constellation of claims is that they are (at least roughly) true. | |
| From: Catherine Z. Elgin (Non-foundationalist epistemology [2005], p.160) | |
| A reaction: Yes. This combines my favourite inference to the best explanation (the favourite tool of us realists) with coherence as justification, where coherence can, crucially, have a social dimension. I begin to think this is the correct account of justification. |
| 11127 | If concepts just are mental representations, what of concepts we may never acquire? [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: We might say that the concept just is the mental representation, ...but there are concepts that human beings may never acquire. ...But if concepts are individuated by their possession conditions this will not be a problem. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Rationale and Maxims in Study of Concepts [2005], p.169), quoted by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I understand the notion of a concept we (or any other creature) may never acquire. They no more seem to exist than buildings that were never even designed. |