8 ideas
304 | Beautiful things must be different from beauty itself, but beauty itself must be present in each of them [Plato] |
Full Idea: Are fine things different from or identical to fineness? They are different from fineness itself, but fineness itself is in a sense present in each of them. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 301a) |
16120 | Knowing how to achieve immortality is pointless without the knowledge how to use immortality [Plato] |
Full Idea: If there exists the knowledge of how to make men immortal, but without the knowledge of how to use this immortality, there seems to be no value in it. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 289b) | |
A reaction: I take this to be not a gormless utilitarianism about knowledge, but a plea for holism, that knowledge only has value as part of some larger picture. The big view is the important view. He's wrong, though. Work out the use later. |
9382 | 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. |
303 | Say how many teeth the other has, then count them. If you are right, we will trust your other claims [Plato] |
Full Idea: If each of you says how many teeth the other has, and when they are counted we find you do know, we will believe your other claims as well. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 294c) | |
A reaction: This is the clairvoyant problem for reliabilism, if truth is delivered for no apparent reason. Useful, but hardly knowledge. HOW did you know the number of teeth? |
10805 | A sentence should be recarved to reveal its content or implication relations [Yablo] |
Full Idea: A sentence invites recarving iff it will then do better justice to the internal structure of its content and/or its implication relations. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Carving Content at the Joints [2002], §11) | |
A reaction: This invites human intervention in a logical process (by choosing which recarvings to do, instead of allowing all equivalences to generate them). He seems to think we should abstract in order to reveal logical form. |
302 | What knowledge is required to live well? [Plato] |
Full Idea: What knowledge would enable us to live finely for the rest of our lives? | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 293a) | |
A reaction: A successful grasp of other people's points of view might lead to respect for them. Also a realisation that we are not isolated individuals. We really are all in it together. |
301 | Only knowledge of some sort is good [Plato] |
Full Idea: Nothing is good except knowledge of some sort. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 292b) | |
A reaction: I've heard it suggested that truth is the only value. This is the Socratic idea that moral goodness is a matter of successful rational judgement. Not convinced, but interesting. |
305 | Something which lies midway between two evils is better than either of them [Plato] |
Full Idea: Something which is composed of two factors which are bad for different purposes and lies midway between them is better than either of the factors. | |
From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 306a) |