4 ideas
| 3348 | If phenomenology is deprived of the synthetic a priori, it is reduced to literature [Benardete,JA on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Sternly envisaged by Husserl as a scientific discipline, phenomenology, on being stripped of the synthetic a priori by the logical positivists, ends up in Sartre as a largely literary undertaking. | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (works [1898]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 3900 | Maybe experience is not essential to perception, but only to the causing of beliefs [Armstrong, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong has argued that experience, as normally understood, is not necessary to perception. To perceive is to acquire beliefs, through a causal process. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (Belief Truth and Knowledge [1973]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 23.4 |
| 4253 | Externalism says knowledge involves a natural relation between the belief state and what makes it true [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Externalist accounts of non-inferential knowledge say what makes a true non-inferential belief a case of knowledge is some natural relation which holds between the belief state and the situation which makes the belief true. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Belief Truth and Knowledge [1973], 11.III.6) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong's concept is presumably a response to Quine's desire to 'naturalise epistemology'. Bad move, I suspect. It probably reduces knowledge to mere true belief, and hence a redundant concept. |
| 5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning. | |
| From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out. |