Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Content Preservation', 'Symposium' and 'Modal and Anti-Luck Epistemology'

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
'Modal epistemology' demands a connection between the belief and facts in possible worlds [Black,T]
     Full Idea: In 'modal epistemologies' a belief counts as knowledge only if there is a modal connection - a connection not only to the actual world, but also to other non-actual possible worlds - between the belief and the facts of the matter.
     From: Tim Black (Modal and Anti-Luck Epistemology [2011], 1)
     A reaction: [Pritchard 2005 seems to be a source for this] This sounds to me a bit like Nozick's tracking or sensitivity theory. Nozick is, I suppose, diachronic (time must pass, for the tracking), where this theory is synchronic.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
Gettier and lottery cases seem to involve luck, meaning bad connection of beliefs to facts [Black,T]
     Full Idea: The protagonists in Gettier cases and in lottery cases fail to have knowledge because their beliefs are true simply as a matter of luck, where this means that their beliefs themselves are not appropriately connected to the facts.
     From: Tim Black (Modal and Anti-Luck Epistemology [2011], 1)
     A reaction: The lottery problem is you correctly believe 'my ticket won't win the lottery' even though you don't seem to actually know it won't. Is the Gettier problem simply the problem of lucky knowledge? 'Luck' is a rather vague concept.
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.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / h. Fine deeds
Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon]
     Full Idea: Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'.
     From: Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5)
     A reaction: This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue