9 ideas
| 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 |
| 8845 | An experience's having propositional content doesn't make it a belief [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: To say that experiences have propositional content is not to say that experiences are beliefs. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: This is important for opponents of foundationalism, because they will not allow a raw experience to act as a justification on its own. Even if concepts, or even propositions, are offered by experience, the crucial evaluation must preceded knowledge. |
| 8842 | The best argument for immediate justification is not the Regress Argument, but considering examples [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: The best argument for immediate justification is not the Regress Argument, but from considering examples, such as I have a headache, I am raising my arm, I am imagining my grandmother, or seeing how dominoes could fill a chessboard. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §3) | |
| A reaction: Most of his examples depend on the fact that they cannot be challenged by anyone else, because they are within his own mind. The dominoes require complex thought. The first two could be erroneous if he was dreaming. |
| 8843 | Impure coherentists accept that perceptions can justify, unlike pure coherentists [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: Pure coherentists claim that a belief can only be justified by its relations to other beliefs; impure coherentists are willing to give some non-beliefs, such as perceptual experiences, a justifying role. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think I would vote for the pure version. The distinction that is needed, I think, is between justification and evidence. You have to surmise causal links and explanations before you can see an experience as evidence, and then justification. |
| 8844 | Coherentism rests on the claim that justifications must be beliefs, with propositional content [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: The Master Argument for coherentism is the claim that a justifier requires asserted propositional content, and that only beliefs represent propositions assertively. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think this claim (which Pryor attacks) is correct. A key point is that almost any experience can be delusional, and in need of critical evaluation. We would even only accept an experience as being necessarily veridical after critical evaluation. |
| 8846 | Reasons for beliefs can be cited to others, unlike a raw headache experience [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: If you have reasons for your belief, they should be considerations you could in principle cite, or give, to someone who doubted or challenged the belief. You can't give some else a non-propositional state like a headache. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §6) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I agree, but if someone asked you to justify your claim that there is a beautiful sunset over the harbour, you could just say 'Look!'. Headaches are too private. The person must still see that the sunset is red, and not the window. |
| 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. |
| 8847 | Beliefs are not chosen, but you can seek ways to influence your belief [Pryor] |
| Full Idea: Ordinarily we make no intentional choices about what to believe, but one can choose to believe something, and then seek ways to get oneself to believe it. | |
| From: James Pryor (There is immediate Justification [2005], §7) | |
| A reaction: Deliberately reading the articles of a philosopher that you seem to agree with would be an example. Presumably the belief that this is a good belief and should be given support is not itself voluntarily chosen. Ultimately we are helpless. See Idea 1854. |
| 19216 | Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist? | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions | |
| A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done? |