Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Content Preservation', 'The Road to Serfdom' and 'Making Things Happen'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification
Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge]
     Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject.
     From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
     A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
An explanation is a causal graph [Woodward,J, by Strevens]
     Full Idea: On Woodward's manipulationist view, an explanation would take the form of a causal graph.
     From: report of James Woodward (Making Things Happen [2003]) by Michael Strevens - No Understanding without Explanation 1
     A reaction: The idea is that causation is all to do with how nature responds when you try to manipulate it. I'm certainly in favour of tying explanation closely to causation.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 8. Socialism
Socialist economics needs a very strong central power, virtually leading to slavery [Hayek, by Oksala]
     Full Idea: Hayek argues that socialist economic equality can only be effectively put into practice by a strong, dictatorial government. Planning has to be imposed by force, and centralised economic power creates a dependency scarcely distingishable from slavery.
     From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.7
     A reaction: I don't see much sign of the post-war British Labour government being anything like this, even though they nationalised the railways and introduce a national health service. Hayek was mesmerised by Russia.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 4. Free market
Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt]
     Full Idea: Hayek was a liberal (rather than a conservative), …but the individual liberty he cared about was not diversity or freedom of thought. It was freedom to operate in the market.
     From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: There seems to have been a drift from obsession with freedom to participate in the market, towards the less plausible idea that market forces can solve everything. I once met someone who was convinced the market could solve environmental problems.
Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek]
     Full Idea: Once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all comprehensive.
     From: F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: Hayek was terrified of totalitarianism (quite reasonably), but fascism and communism don't seem to have arisen in the way he describes. I'm not clear why sensible intervention in the market should slide down into nightmare.