23 ideas
| 3695 | Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: My conviction is that philosophy is a priori if it is anything. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How about knowledge of a posteriori necessities, such as the length of a metre, known by observation of the standard metre in Paris? |
| 3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: If one never in fact grasps any necessary connections between anything, it is hard to see what reasoning could possible amount to. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.3) |
| 3700 | Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The epistemic authority of coherence cannot itself be established by appeal to coherence. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7 n50) | |
| A reaction: The standard approach amongs modern philosophers (following, I think, Kripke) is to insist on 'intuition' as basic, despite all its problems. I have no better suggestion. |
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 3697 | The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: While necessity and possibility are interdefinable concepts, it is the idea of a possible world or situation which is intuitively primary. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.3) |
| 3707 | Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Criteria or rules do not somehow apply to themselves. They must be judged by the sort of rational insight or intuition that the rationalist is advocating. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §5.2) |
| 3704 | Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Moderate rationalism preserves a priori justification, but rejects the idea that it is infallible. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) |
| 3696 | A priori justification requires understanding but no experience [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori. |
| 3706 | A priori justification can vary in degree [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: A priori justification can vary in degree. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.5) | |
| A reaction: This idea, which I trace back at least to Russell, seems to me one of breakthrough ideas in modern thought. It means that a priori knowledge can be reconnected with a posteriori knowledge. |
| 3703 | You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Moderate empiricists try unsuccessfully to explain a priori justification by means of analyticity, and radical empiricist attempts to dispense with a priori justification end in nearly total scepticism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: My working theory is neither of the above. Because we can abstract from the physical world, we can directly see/experience generalised (and even necessary) truths about it. |
| 3699 | The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The attempt to prove physical statements on the basis of sensory evidence is defeated by the problem of induction. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's use of the word 'prove', which would be a pretty forlorn hope. Insofar as experience proves anything, fully sensing a chair proves its existence. |
| 3701 | Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: An externalist theory of epistemic justification or warrant need not involve the possession by the believer of anything like a reason for thinking that their belief is true. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
| A reaction: That is the problem with externalism. If the believer does not have a reason, then why would they believe? Externalists are interesting on justification, but daft about belief. Why do I believe I know something, when I can't recall how I learnt it? |
| 3702 | Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: If externalism is the final story, we have no reason to think that any of our beliefs are true, which amounts to a very strong and intuitively implausible version of scepticism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
| A reaction: A very good point. I may, like a cat, know many things, with good external support, but as soon as I ask sceptical questions, I sink without trace if I lack internal reasons. |
| 3709 | Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7) |
| 3708 | All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: I assume that the contents of thought can be accounted for by appeal to just two general sorts of ingredient - properties (including relations) and indexicals. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §6.7) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept that relations are a type of properties. Since he does not include objects or substances, I take it that he considers objects to be bundles of properties. |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |
| 3698 | Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation would be better described as the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning and belief. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.5) | |
| A reaction: Not necessarily. It is not incoherent to believe that the target people have a coherent and stable system of meaning and belief, but finding its translation indeterminate because it is holistic, and rooted in a way of life. |
| 23169 | Democratic institutions become impossible in a fanatical democracy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Even democracy, when it becomes fanatical, as it did …in the French Revolution, ceases to be Liberal. Indeed, a fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.26) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because the supposed 'will of the people' is continually placed in opposition to the institutions. For example, there is a problem if a referendum is held, which produces a result in conflict with the institutions. |
| 23170 | Liberal opinions are tentative rather than dogmatic, and are always responsive to new evidence [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The essence of the Liberal outlook lies ...in how opinions are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively (as they are in science), and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.26) | |
| A reaction: A nice assessment. Russell shows himself finally to be a Liberal. This flexible approach to opinions is what infuriates dogmatists from both the left and the right. It might be said that the basic evidence rarely changes. |
| 23172 | Empiricist Liberalism is the only view for someone who favours scientific evidence and happiness [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Empiricist Liberalism (not incompatible with democratic socialism) is, as in Locke's time, the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who demands some scientific evidence for beliefs, and also desires human happiness more than some party or creed. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.31) | |
| A reaction: I like this way of presenting liberalism. In the modern world we are sunk if we don't pay attention to experts, so we all need a critical understanding of what counts as good evidence. Tricky in a world of lying media. |
| 23171 | Empiricism is ethically superior, because dogmatism favours persecution and hatred [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Empiricism is to be commended not only on the grounds of its greater truth, but also on ethical grounds. Dogma demands authority rather than intelligent thought; it requires persecution of heretics and unbelievers, and favours systematic hatred. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Philosophy and Politics [1950], p.31) | |
| A reaction: He links empiricism with the liberal outlook. At its best, the respect by empiricists for evidence is a sort of humility. |