5 ideas
| 4242 | Pure supervenience explains nothing, and is a sign of something fundamental we don't know [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: Pure, unexplained supervenience is never a solution to a problem but a sign that there is something fundamental we don't know. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (The Psychophysical Nexus [2000], §III) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. It is not a theory or an explanation, merely the observation of a correlation which will require explanation. Why are they correlated? |
| 8800 | If you would deny a truth if you know the full evidence, then knowledge has social aspects [Harman, by Sosa] |
| Full Idea: If one reads of a genuine assassination, but then fails to read the reports next day which untruthfully deny the event, one probably does not know of the event. But we must conclude that knowledge has a further 'social aspect'. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (Induction [1970], §IV) by Ernest Sosa - The Raft and the Pyramid Appx | |
| A reaction: I doubt if this is enough to support an externalist account of defeasibility. Wise people don't 'know' of an event after one report. For 24 hours the Royalists thought they had won Marston Moor! You know he's dead when you see the Zapruder film. |
| 1470 | Belief in an afterlife may be unverifiable in this life, but it will be verifiable after death [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Religion is capable of 'eschatological verification', by reaching evidence at the end of life, even though falsification of its claims is never found in this life; a prediction of coming to a Celestial City must await the end of the journey. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], III) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1471 | It may be hard to verify that we have become immortal, but we could still then verify religious claims [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Verification of religious claims after death is only possible if the concept of surviving death is intelligible, and we can understand the concept of immortality, despite difficulties in being certain that we had reached it. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], IV) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 1469 | Some things (e.g. a section of the expansion of PI) can be verified but not falsified [Hick, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Falsification and verification are not logically equivalent. For example, you might verify the claim that there will be three consecutive sevens in the infinite expansion of PI, but you could never falsify such a claim. | |
| From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], §II) by PG - Db (ideas) |