Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?st1=Edmund L. Gettier', 'An essentialist approach to Truth-making' and 'Librium de interpretatione editio secunda'

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5 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation
Propositions are made true, in virtue of something which explains its truth [Lowe]
     Full Idea: If a proposition is 'made' true, it has to be true 'in virtue of' something, meaning a relationship of metaphysical explanation. Thus a true proposition must have truth conferred on it in some way that explains how it gets to be true.
     From: E.J. Lowe (An essentialist approach to Truth-making [2009], p.202)
     A reaction: It is good to ask what we mean by 'makes'. I like essentialist explanations, but this may be misplaced. Observing that y makes x true seems to be rather less than actually explaining how it does it. What would such explanations look like?
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Modes are beings that are related both to substances and to universals [Lowe]
     Full Idea: Modes are real beings that stand in non-contingent formal ontological relations both to individual substances and to immanent universals.
     From: E.J. Lowe (An essentialist approach to Truth-making [2009], p.212)
     A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I pass it on. 'Modes' seem to invite the Razor, if we already have substances and universals. I am no clear about 'instantiation' because I now have the word 'mode' to play with.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / b. Critique of tropes
Tropes have existence independently of any entities [Lowe]
     Full Idea: Pure trope theorists must apparently hold that each trope has its identity underivatively, not that it depends for it on or owes it to other entities of any sort.
     From: E.J. Lowe (An essentialist approach to Truth-making [2009], p.207)
     A reaction: Lowe defends dependent 'modes' of things, against independent 'tropes'. Good, but he then has to say what the thing is (a modeless 'substance'?), because it can't just be a bundle of modes or tropes.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
We can call the quality of Plato 'Platonity', and say it is a quality which only he possesses [Boethius]
     Full Idea: Let the incommunicable property of Plato be called 'Platonity'. For we can call this quality 'Platonity' by a fabricated word, in the way in which we call the quality of man 'humanity'. Therefore this Platonity is one man's alone - Plato's.
     From: Boethius (Librium de interpretatione editio secunda [c.516], PL64 462d), quoted by Alvin Plantinga - Actualism and Possible Worlds 5
     A reaction: Plantinga uses this idea to reinstate the old notion of a haecceity, to bestow unshakable identity on things. My interest in the quotation is that the most shocking confusions about properties arose long before the invention of set theory.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
Being a true justified belief is not a sufficient condition for knowledge [Gettier]
     Full Idea: The claim that someone knows a proposition if it is true, it is believed, and the person is justified in their belief is false, in that the conditions do not state a sufficient condition for the claim.
     From: Edmund L. Gettier (Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? [1963], p.145)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the famous Gettier Problem, which has motivated most epistemology for the last forty years. Gettier implies that justification is necessary, even if it is not sufficient. He gives two counterexamples.