Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Gettier Problem', 'Platonism and the Spiritual Life' and 'What is a Leading Principle?'

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3 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / c. Aim of beliefs
A 'belief' is a habit which determines how our imagination and actions proceed [Peirce]
     Full Idea: A cerebral habit of the highest kind, which will determine what we do in fancy as well as what we do in action, is called a 'belief'.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (What is a Leading Principle? [1880], I)
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
A Gettier case is a belief which is true, and its fallible justification involves some luck [Hetherington]
     Full Idea: A Gettier case contains a belief which is true and well justified without being knowledge. Its justificatory support is also fallible, ...and there is considerable luck in how the belief combnes being true with being justified.
     From: Stephen Hetherington (The Gettier Problem [2011], 5)
     A reaction: This makes luck the key factor. 'Luck' is a rather vague concept, and so the sort of luck involved must first be spelled out. Or the varieties of luck that can produce this outcome.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
The good is not relative, but is rooted in facts about human needs [Santayana]
     Full Idea: The good is by no means relative to opinion, but is rooted in the unconscious and fatal nature of living beings, a nature which predetermines for them the difference between foods and poisons, happiness and misery.
     From: George Santayana (Platonism and the Spiritual Life [1927], p.3), quoted by John Gray - Seven Types of Atheism 6
     A reaction: That is, he concedes that the good is relative to human beings, but that the relevant facts about human beings are not relative. I think he has the correct picture. The key point is that the good is 'rooted' in something, and doesn't just float free.