Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Gettier Problem', 'Slaughterhouse Five' and 'The Nature and Communication of Substance'

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4 ideas

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.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut]
     Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.
     From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4)
     A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 5. Parallelism
Maybe mind and body are parallel, like two good clocks [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Two clocks in perfect agreement must be by natural influence, or the control of a craftsman, or their perfect construction at the beginning. Only the third way (of "preestablished harmony" by God) is possible.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Nature and Communication of Substance [1690], p.121)
     A reaction: Presumably 'natural influence' would cover the possibility that (unnoticed by you, apparently) one clock is attached to the other clock at the relevant points. If they are unconnected, presumably they are quite unaware of one another's existence.
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
If the universe is a perfect agreement of uncommunicating substances, there must be a common source [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: The perfect agreement of so many substances which have no communication whatever with each other can only come from a common source.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Nature and Communication of Substance [1690], p.120)