44 ideas
| 18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
| Full Idea: We are able to reason about inconsistent beliefs, stories, and theories in useful and important ways | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) |
| 10354 | Correspondence could be with other beliefs, rather than external facts [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory of truth does not commit one to the view the reality is mind-independent. There is no reason why the 'facts' that correspond to true beliefs might not themselves be beliefs or ideas. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, as it is very easy to assume that espousal of correspondence necessarily goes with realism about the external world. It is surprising to think that a full-blown Idealist might espouse the correspondence theory. |
| 10353 | Tarskians distinguish truth from falsehood by relations between members of sets [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: According to the Tarskians we separate out truths from falsehoods by tracing the relations between members of different sets. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.16) |
| 18789 | Intuitionist logic looks best as natural deduction [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Intuitionist logic appears most attractive in the form of a natural deduction system. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.5) |
| 18790 | Intuitionism as natural deduction has no rule for negation [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In intuitionist logic each connective has one introduction and one elimination rule attached to it, but in the classical system we have to add an extra rule for negation. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: How very intriguing. Mares says there are other ways to achieve classical logic, but they all seem rather cumbersome. |
| 18787 | Three-valued logic is useful for a theory of presupposition [Mares] |
| Full Idea: One reason for wanting a three-valued logic is to act as a basis of a theory of presupposition. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Strawson 1950] The point is that you can get a result when the presupposition does not apply, as in talk of the 'present King of France'. |
| 18793 | Material implication (and classical logic) considers nothing but truth values for implications [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The problem with material implication, and classical logic more generally, is that it considers only the truth value of formulas in deciding whether to make an implication stand between them. It ignores everything else. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem case is conditionals, and relevance is an obvious extra principle that comes to mind. |
| 18784 | In classical logic the connectives can be related elegantly, as in De Morgan's laws [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Among the virtues of classical logic is the fact that the connectives are related to one another in elegant ways that often involved negation. For example, De Morgan's Laws, which involve negation, disjunction and conjunction. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Mares says these enable us to take disjunction or conjunction as primitive, and then define one in terms of the other, using negation as the tool. |
| 18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
| Full Idea: On its standard reading, excluded middle tells us that bivalence holds. To reject excluded middle, we must reject either non-contradiction, or ¬(A∧B) ↔ (¬A∨¬B) [De Morgan 3], or the principle of double negation. All have been tried. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) |
| 18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
| Full Idea: If we treat disjunction in the standard way and take the negation of a statement A to mean that A is false, accepting excluded middle forces us also to accept the principle of bivalence, which is the dictum that every statement is either true or false. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: Mates's point is to show that passively taking the normal account of negation for granted has important implications. |
| 18782 | The connectives are studied either through model theory or through proof theory [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In studying the logical connectives, philosophers of logic typically adopt the perspective of either model theory (givng truth conditions of various parts of the language), or of proof theory (where use in a proof system gives the connective's meaning). | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The commonest proof theory is natural deduction, giving rules for introduction and elimination. Mates suggests moving between the two views is illuminating. |
| 18783 | Many-valued logics lack a natural deduction system [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Many-valued logics do not have reasonable natural deduction systems. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) |
| 18792 | Situation semantics for logics: not possible worlds, but information in situations [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Situation semantics for logics consider not what is true in worlds, but what information is contained in situations. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Since many theoretical physicists seem to think that 'information' might be the most basic concept of a natural ontology, this proposal is obviously rather appealing. Barwise and Perry are the authors of the theory. |
| 18785 | Consistency is semantic, but non-contradiction is syntactic [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The difference between the principle of consistency and the principle of non-contradiction is that the former must be stated in a semantic metalanguage, whereas the latter is a thesis of logical systems. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) |
| 18788 | For intuitionists there are not numbers and sets, but processes of counting and collecting [Mares] |
| Full Idea: For the intuitionist, talk of mathematical objects is rather misleading. For them, there really isn't anything that we should call the natural numbers, but instead there is counting. What intuitionists study are processes, such as counting and collecting. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: That is the first time I have seen mathematical intuitionism described in a way that made it seem attractive. One might compare it to a metaphysics based on processes. Apparently intuitionists struggle with infinite sets and real numbers. |
| 10337 | We can have knowledge without belief, if others credit us with knowledge [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: We can have knowledge that p without believing that p. It is enough that others credit us with the knowledge. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing Welbourne 1993] This is an extreme of the communitarian view. |
| 10357 | Methodological Solipsism assumes all ideas could be derived from one mind [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: 'Methodological solipsism' says merely that everyone can conceive of themselves as the only subject. Everyone can construct all referents of their thought and talk out of complexes of their very own experience. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
| A reaction: The possibility of this can be denied (e.g. by Putnam 1983, dating back to Wittgenstein). I too would doubt it, though finding a good argument seems a forlorn hope. |
| 10339 | Foundations seem utterly private, even from oneself at a later time [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Foundationalists place the foundations of knowledge at a point where they are in principle accessible only to the individual knower. They cannot be 'shared' with another person, or with oneself at a later time. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: Kusch is defending an extremely social view of knowledge. Being private to an individual may just he an unfortunate epistemological fact. Being unavailable even to one's later self seems a real problem for foundational certainty. |
| 10331 | Testimony is reliable if it coheres with evidence for a belief, and with other beliefs [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Testimony must be reliable since its deliveries cohere both with input from other information routes in the formation of single beliefs, and with other types of beliefs in the formation of systems of belief. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Kusch criticises this view (credited to C.A.J. Coady 1992) as too individualistic , but it sounds to me dead right. I take a major appeal of the coherence account of justification to be its capacity to extend seamlessly out into external testimony. |
| 10338 | The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: I endorse this idea, which endorses Davidson's slogan on the subject. The key thought is that a 'pure' sensation is uninterpreted, and so cannot justify anything. It is only once it generates a proposition that it can justify. But McDowell 1994. |
| 10340 | Individualistic coherentism lacks access to all of my beliefs, or critical judgement of my assessment [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Individualistic versions of coherentism assume that a belief is justified if it fits with all, or most, of my contemporaneous beliefs. But who has access to that totality? Who can judge my assessment? From what position could it be judged? | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Though I agree with Kusch on the social aspect of coherence, I don't think these are major criticisms. Who can access, or critically evaluate a society's body of supposedly coherent beliefs? We just do our best. |
| 10345 | Individual coherentism cannot generate the necessary normativity [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Standard forms of coherentism are unable to account for normativity, because of their common individualism. Normativity cannot be generated within the isolated individual, or in the causal interaction between world and individual mind. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: This thought leads to belief in rationalism and the a priori, not (as Kusch hopes) to the social dimension. How can social normativity get off the ground if there is none of it to be found in individuals? The criteria of coherence seem to be given. |
| 10350 | Cultures decide causal routes, and they can be critically assessed [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Assessments of causal routes are specific to cultures, and thus not beyond dialectical justification. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This is a good defence of the social and communitarian view against those who are trying to be thoroughly naturalistic and physicalist by relying entirely on causal processes for all explanation, even though I sympathise with such naturalism. |
| 10343 | Process reliabilism has been called 'virtue epistemology', resting on perception, memory, reason [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Process reliabilism is sometimes subsumed under the label 'virtue epistemology', so that processes are 'epistemically virtuous' if they lead mostly to true beliefs. The 'intellectual virtues' here are perception, memory or reasoning. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I am shocked that 'intellectual virtue' should be hijacked by reliabilists, suggesting that it even applies to a good clock. I like the Aristotelian idea that sound knowledge rests on qualities of character in the knower - including social qualities. |
| 10341 | Justification depends on the audience and one's social role [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: How a claim (about an X-ray) needs to be justified depends on whether one is confronted by a group of laypersons, or of experts, and is prescribed by one's social role. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. I cannot think of any absolute criterion for justification which doesn't play straight into the hands of sceptics. Final and certain justification is an incoherent notion. But I am a little more individualistic than Kusch. |
| 10334 | Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This is very thought-provoking. A key concept linking the two would be 'respect'. Consider also 'experts'. |
| 10336 | Powerless people are assumed to be unreliable, even about their own lives [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: The powerless in society are not usually taken to be trustworthy witnesses even when it comes to providing information about their own lives. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This is where epistemology shades off into politics and the writings of Foucault. |
| 10324 | Testimony does not just transmit knowledge between individuals - it actually generates knowledge [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Testimony is not just a means of transmission of complete items of knowledge from and to an individual. Testimony is almost always generative of knowledge. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear how my testimony could fail to be knowledge for me, but become knowledge just because I pass it to you. I might understand what I say better than you did. When fools pool their testimony, presumably not much knowledge results. |
| 10327 | Some want to reduce testimony to foundations of perceptions, memories and inferences [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Reductionalists about testimony are foundationalists by temperament. ...Their project amounts to justifying our testimonial beliefs in terms of perceptions, memories and inferences. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Kusch wants to claim that the sharing of testimony is the means by which knowledge is created. My line is something like knowledge being founded on a social coherence, which is an extension of internal individual coherence. |
| 10329 | Testimony won't reduce to perception, if perception depends on social concepts and categories [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: How can we hope to reduce testimony to perception if the way we perceive the world is to a considerable extent shaped by concepts and categories that we have learned from others? | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: To me this sounds like good support for coherentism, the benign circle between my reason, my experience, and the testimony and reason of others. Asking how the circle could get started shows ignorance of biology. |
| 10330 | A foundation is what is intelligible, hence from a rational source, and tending towards truth [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: It can be argued that testimony is non-reductive because it relies on the fact that whatever is intelligible is likely to come from a rational source, and that rational sources, by their very nature, tend towards the truth. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4 n7) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Tyler Burge 1993, 1997] If this makes testimony non-reductive, how would one assess whether the testimony is 'intelligible'? |
| 10325 | Vindicating testimony is an expression of individualism [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: To believe that testimony needs a general vindication is itself an expression of individualism. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Kusch is a spokesman for Communitarian Epistemology. Surely we are allowed to identify the criteria for what makes a good witness? Ask a policeman. |
| 10335 | Myths about lonely genius are based on epistemological individualism [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Many myths about the lonely scientific genius underwrite epistemological individualism. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: They all actually say that they 'stood on the shoulders of giants', and they are invariably immersed in the contemporary researches of teams of like-minded people. How surprised were the really expert contemporaries by Newton, Einstein, Gödel? |
| 10323 | Communitarian Epistemology says 'knowledge' is a social status granted to groups of people [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: I propose 'communitarian epistemology' - claiming first that the term 'knowledge' marks a social status, and is dependent on the existence of communities, and second that this social status is typically granted to groups of people. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this very congenial, though Kusch goes a little far when he claims that knowledge is largely created by social groups. He allows that Robinson Crusoe might have knowledge of his island, but can't give a decent account of it. |
| 10348 | Private justification is justification to imagined other people [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Coming to convince myself is actually to form a pretend communal belief with pretend others, ..which is clearly parasitic on the case where the others are real. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This slightly desperate move is a way for 'communitarian' epistemologists to deal with Robinson Crusoe cases. I think Kusch is right, but it is a bit hard to prove that this is what is 'actually' going on. |
| 10349 | To be considered 'an individual' is performed by a society [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: One cannot even have the social status of 'being an individual' unless it has been conferred on one by a communal performative belief. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This sounds crazy until you think of the mentality of a tenth generation slave in a fully slave-owning society. |
| 10344 | Our experience may be conceptual, but surely not the world itself? [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: I am unconvinced by McDowell's arguments in favour of treating the world as itself conceptual. Granted that our experience is conceptual in quality; it still does not follow that the world itself is conceptual. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I would take Kusch's point to be a given in any discussion of concepts, and McDowell as a non-starter on this one. I am inclined to believe that we do have non-conceptual experiences, but I take them to be epistemologically useless. |
| 18791 | In 'situation semantics' our main concepts are abstracted from situations [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In 'situation semantics' individuals, properties, facts, and events are treated as abstractions from situations. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: [Barwise and Perry 1983 are cited] Since I take the process of abstraction to be basic to thought, I am delighted to learn that someone has developed a formal theory based on it. I am immediately sympathetic to situation semantics. |
| 10358 | Often socialising people is the only way to persuade them [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Often we can convince members of other cultures only by socializing them into our culture. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.19) | |
| A reaction: This looks both true and interesting, and is good support for Kusch's communitarian epistemology. What actually persuades certainly doesn't have to be reasons, and may be almost entirely social. |
| 10333 | Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This thought offers an account of epistemology which could fit in with communitarian political views. See the ideas of Martin Kusch in this database. |
| 10351 | Natural kinds are social institutions [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are social institutions. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: I can see what he means, but I take this to be deeply wrong. A clarification of what exactly is meant by a 'natural kind' is needed before we can make any progress with this one. Is a village a natural kind? Or a poodle? Or a shoal? |
| 10332 | Omniscience is incoherent, since knowledge is a social concept [Kusch] |
| Full Idea: The very idea of omniscience is dubious, at least for the communitarian epistemologist, since knowing is a social state, and knowledge is a social status, needing a position in a social network. | |
| From: Martin Kusch (Knowledge by Agreement [2002], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: A nice test case. Would an omniscient mind have evidence for its beliefs? Would it continually check for coherence? Is it open to criticism? Does it even entertain the possibility of error? Could another 'omniscient' mind challenge it? |
| 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. |