41 ideas
| 14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| 6346 | The main epistemological theories are foundationalist, coherence, probabilistic and reliabilist [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6351 | Most people now agree that our reasoning proceeds defeasibly, rather than deductively [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6374 | To believe maximum truths, believe everything; to have infallible beliefs, believe nothing [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6355 | Direct realism says justification is partly a function of pure perceptual states, not of beliefs [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6359 | Phenomenalism offered conclusive perceptual knowledge, but conclusive reasons no longer seem essential [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6366 | Perception causes beliefs in us, without inference or justification [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6362 | Sense evidence is not beliefs, because they are about objective properties, not about appearances [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6371 | Bayesian epistemology is Bayes' Theorem plus the 'simple rule' (believe P if it is probable) [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6373 | Internalism says if anything external varies, the justifiability of the belief does not vary [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| 6353 | People rarely have any basic beliefs, and never enough for good foundations [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6361 | Foundationalism requires self-justification, not incorrigibility [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6357 | Reason cannot be an ultimate foundation, because rational justification requires prior beliefs [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6363 | Foundationalism is wrong, because either all beliefs are prima facie justified, or none are [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6365 | Negative coherence theories do not require reasons, so have no regress problem [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6354 | Coherence theories fail, because they can't accommodate perception as the basis of knowledge [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6367 | Coherence theories isolate justification from the world [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6370 | Externalism comes as 'probabilism' (probability of truth) and 'reliabilism' (probability of good cognitive process) [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6358 | One belief may cause another, without being the basis for the second belief [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6364 | We can't start our beliefs from scratch, because we wouldn't know where to start [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6352 | Enumerative induction gives a universal judgement, while statistical induction gives a proportion [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 6372 | Since every tautology has a probability of 1, should we believe all tautologies? [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| 6360 | Scientific confirmation is best viewed as inference to the best explanation [Pollock/Cruz] |
| 20239 | Unlike us, the early Greeks thought envy was a good thing, and hope a bad thing [Hesiod, by Nietzsche] |
| 22405 | Negative utilitarianism implies that the world should be destroyed, to avoid future misery [Smart] |
| 22404 | Any group interested in ethics must surely have a sentiment of generalised benevolence [Smart] |
| 14613 | Special relativity won't determine a preferred frame, but we can pick one externally [Smart] |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| 14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
| 14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |