14 ideas
12801 | Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley] |
Full Idea: Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power. | |
From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317) | |
A reaction: I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything! |
12800 | Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley] |
Full Idea: Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective. | |
From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314) | |
A reaction: I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of. |
12802 | We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley] |
Full Idea: It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices. | |
From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320) | |
A reaction: [See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end. |
12803 | Justification comes from acceptable procedures, given practical constraints [Foley] |
Full Idea: One justifiably believes a proposition if one has an epistemically rational belief that one's procedures with respect to it have been acceptable, given practical limitations, and one's goals. | |
From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.322) | |
A reaction: I quite like this, except that it is too individualistic. My goals, and my standards of acceptability decree whether I know? I don't see the relevance of goals; only a pragmatist would mention such a thing. Standards of acceptability are social. |
3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it. |
23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |
20725 | The idea of duty in one's calling haunts us, like a lost religion [Weber] |
Full Idea: The idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
A reaction: Great sentence! Vast scholarship boiled down to a simple and disturbing truth. I recognise this in me. Having been 'Head of Philosophy' once is partly what motivates me to compile these ideas. |
20722 | Acquisition and low consumption lead to saving, investment, and increased wealth [Weber] |
Full Idea: If people are acquisitive but consumption is limited, the inevitable result is the accumulation of capital through the compulsion to save. The restraints on consumption naturally served to increase wealth by enabling the productive investment of capital. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
A reaction: [compressed. He also quotes John Wesley saying this] In a nutshell, this is how the protestant ethic (esp. if puritan) drives capitalism. It also needs everyone to have a 'calling', and a rebellion against monasticism in favour of worldly work. |
20724 | When asceticism emerged from the monasteries, it helped to drive the modern economy [Weber] |
Full Idea: When asceticism was carried out of the monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 5) | |
A reaction: Since Max Weber's time I should think this is less and less true. If you hunt for ascetics in the modern world, they are probably dropped out, and pursuing green politics. Industrialists are obsessed with property and wine. |
20717 | Capitalism is not unlimited greed, and may even be opposed to greed [Weber] |
Full Idea: Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less in its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
A reaction: The point is that profits have to be re-invested, rather than spent on pleasure. If we are stuck with capitalism we need a theory of Ethical Capitalism. |
20718 | Modern western capitalism has free labour, business separate from household, and book-keeping [Weber] |
Full Idea: The modern Occident has developed a very different form of capitalism: the rational capitalist organisation of free labour …which needed two other factors: the separation of the business from the household, and the closely connected rational book-keeping. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro) | |
A reaction: For small businesses the separation has to be maintained by a ruthless effort of imagination. Book-keeping is because the measure of loss and profit is the engine of the whole game. Labour had to be dragged free of family and community. |
20719 | Punish the heretic, but be indulgent to the sinner [Weber] |
Full Idea: The rule of the Catholic church is 'punishing the heretic, but indulgent of the sinner'. | |
From: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], 1) | |
A reaction: Weber cites this as if it is a folklore saying. It seems to fit the teachings of Jesus, who is intensely keen on unwavering faith, but very kind to those who stray morally. Hence Graham Greene novels, all about sinners. |