Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Case for Closure', 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'Five Milestones of Empiricism'

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11 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 7. Contextual Definition
Contextual definition shifted the emphasis from words to whole sentences [Quine]
Bentham's contextual definitions preserved terms after their denotation became doubtful [Quine]
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 2. Common Sense Certainty
Commitment to 'I have a hand' only makes sense in a context where it has been doubted [Hawthorne]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine]
Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine]
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / c. Knowledge closure
How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne]
We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne]
Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness
Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences [Quine]