11 ideas
| 6950 | You can be rational with undetected or minor inconsistencies [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Rationality doesn't require consistency, because you can be rational despite undetected inconsistencies in beliefs, and it isn't always rational to respond to a discovery of inconsistency by dropping everything in favour of eliminating that inconsistency. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being correct, and is (I am beginning to realise) a vital contribution made to our understanding by pragmatism. European thinking has been too keen on logic as the model of good reasoning. |
| 6954 | A coherent conceptual scheme contains best explanations of most of your beliefs [Harman] |
| Full Idea: A set of unrelated beliefs seems less coherent than a tightly organized conceptual scheme that contains explanatory principles that make sense of most of your beliefs; this is why inference to the best explanation is an attractive pattern of inference. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.5.2) | |
| A reaction: I find this a very appealing proposal. The central aim of rational thought seems to me to be best explanation, and I increasingly think that most of my beliefs rest on their apparent coherence, rather than their foundations. |
| 6955 | Enumerative induction is inference to the best explanation [Harman] |
| Full Idea: We might think of enumerative induction as inference to the best explanation, taking the generalization to explain its instances. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a helpful connection. The best explanation of these swans being white is that all swans are white; it ceased to be the best explanation when black swans turned up. In the ultimate case, a law of nature is the explanation. |
| 6952 | Induction is 'defeasible', since additional information can invalidate it [Harman] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes said that inductive reasoning is 'defeasible', meaning that considerations that support a given conclusion can be defeated by additional information. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.4.5) | |
| A reaction: True. The point is that being defeasible does not prevent such thinking from being rational. The rational part of it is to acknowledge that your conclusion is defeasible. |
| 6953 | All reasoning is inductive, and deduction only concerns implication [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Deductive logic is concerned with deductive implication, not deductive reasoning; all reasoning is inductive | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.4.5) | |
| A reaction: This may be an attempt to stipulate how the word 'reasoning' should be used in future. It is, though, a bold and interesting claim, given the reputation of induction (since Hume) of being a totally irrational process. |
| 6951 | Ordinary rationality is conservative, starting from where your beliefs currently are [Harman] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary rationality is generally conservative, in the sense that you start from where you are, with your present beliefs and intentions. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Rationality [1995], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: This stands opposed to the Cartesian or philosophers' rationality, which requires that (where possible) everything be proved from scratch. Harman seems right, that the normal onus of proof is on changing beliefs, rather proving you should retain them. |
| 20420 | The emotion expressed is non-conscious, but feels oppressive until expression relieves it [Collingwood] |
| Full Idea: The emotion expressed is one of whose nature the person feeling it is no longer conscious. As unexpressed, he feels it in a helpless and oppressed way; as expressed, the oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened and eased. | |
| From: R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], p.110), quoted by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 1 | |
| A reaction: It sounds like the regular smoking of cigarettes. This is Collingwood answer the doubts I felt about Idea 20419. I would have thought the desire of Picasso was to create another painting, but not to express yet another new oppressive feeling. |
| 20421 | Art exists ideally, purely as experiences in the mind of the perceiver [Collingwood, by Kemp] |
| Full Idea: For Collingwood (and Croce) the work of art is an ideal object; …they are things that exist only in the mind, that is, only when one perceives. …The physical work exists to make this experience available. | |
| From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938]) by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 2 | |
| A reaction: This means that the paintings in a gallery cease to be works of art when the gallery is shut, which sounds odd. I suppose 'work of art' is ambiguous, between the experience (right) and the facilitator of the experience (wrong). |
| 20406 | Art clarifies the artist's mind and feelings, thus leading to self-knowledge [Collingwood, by Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Collingwood suggests art should be thought of not as product or artifact but as an act or process of expression through which the artist clarifies her initially vague emotions and states of mind. As such, it is a source of self-knowledge. | |
| From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], Ch.6) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 8.4 | |
| A reaction: I might believe this of writing novels, but not much else. |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |