15 ideas
| 19513 | A contextualist coherentist will say that how strongly a justification must cohere depends on context [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: If you are a coherentist and a contextualist, you'll probably want to hold that how strongly beliefs must cohere with one another in order to count as knowledge (if they are true), or to count as justified, is a contextually variable matter. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: How exciting! He's talking about ME! Context might not only dictate the strength of the coherence, but also the range of beliefs involved. In fact all of Thagard's criteria of coherence may be subject to contextual variation. |
| 19514 | Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: The great rival to contextualism is classical 'invariantism' - invariantism about the truth-conditions [for knowing], combined with variable standards for warranted assertability. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that we might want to assert that someone 'knows' something, when the truth is that they don't. That is, either you know or you don't, but we can bend the rules as to whether we say you know. I take this view to be false. |
| 19515 | We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: We might make the basic contextualist schema more precise ...by saying the change in content will consist in a change in the range of relevant alternatives. Higher standards would discriminate from a broader range of alternatives. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.14) | |
| A reaction: This would handle the 'fake barn' and 'disguised zebra' examples, by saying lower standards do not expect such discriminations. The zebra case has a lower standard than the barn case (because fake barns are the norm here). |
| 19510 | In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: I'm inclined to accept that in certain contexts the standards for knowledge are so low that little more than true belief is required. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: DeRose emphasises that 'a little more' is needed, rather than none. The example given is where 'he knew that p' means little more than 'the information that p was available to him' (in a political scandal). |
| 19516 | Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: While skepticism has drawn much of the attention of contextualists, support for contextualism should also - and perhaps primarily - be looked for in how 'knows' is utilised in non-philosophical conversation. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1016) | |
| A reaction: Contextualists say scepticism is just raising the standards absurdly high. I take it that the ordinary use of the word 'know' is obviously highly contextual, and so varied that I don't see how philosophers could 'regiment' it into invariant form. |
| 19511 | If contextualism is about knowledge attribution, rather than knowledge, then it is philosophy of language [DeRose] |
| Full Idea: Maybe contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge at all, but about knowledge attributions. As such, it is not a piece of epistemology at all, but of philosophy of language. | |
| From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: DeRose takes this view to be wrong. At the very least this will have to include self-attributions, by the supposed knower, because I might say 'I know that p', meaning 'but only in this rather low-standard context'. |
| 21103 | Moral questions can only be decided by common opinion [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Though an appeal to general opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural philosophy or astronomy, be deemed unfair, yet in all questions with regard to morals there is really no other standard for deciding controversies. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.291) | |
| A reaction: Surely this is too pessimistic. Common opinion decided to burn people to death for being witches. Common opinion may usually win, but there must sometimes be good grounds for resisting it. |
| 21099 | People must have agreed to authority, because they are naturally equal, prior to education [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we consider how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education, ...then nothing but their own consent could at first associate them together, and subject them to authority. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.276) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound very convincing. Some people are much better suited than others to training and education. Men vary enormously in size. |
| 21100 | The idea that society rests on consent or promises undermines obedience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were you to preach in most parts of the world that political connections are founded altogether on voluntary consent or a mutual promise, the magistrate would soon imprison you as seditious for loosening the ties of obedience. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.278) | |
| A reaction: He cites obedience as the prime civic virtue, because the law can't operate without it. He doesn't seem to consider the limiting cases of obedience, which makes him essentially a conservative. |
| 20495 | We no more give 'tacit assent' to the state than a passenger carried on board a ship while asleep [Hume] |
| Full Idea: [If we give 'tacit' assent to the state] ...we may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried aboard while asleep. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: We should probably drop the whole idea that we give assent to the state. We are stuck with a state, and a few of us can escape, if it seems important enough, but most of us have no choice. He hope to assent to the controllers of the state. |
| 21101 | The people would be amazed to learn that government arises from their consent [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we assert that all lawful government arises from the consent of the people, we certainly do them a great deal more honour than they deserve, or even expect or desire from us. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.285) | |
| A reaction: Hume has no interest in the purely abstract idea of a contract, and scorns Locke's idea of tacit consent to government. I assume he would dismiss Rawls as unrealistic theorising. Hume loves peace, and is alarmed by change. |
| 6703 | Poor people lack the knowledge or wealth to move to a different state [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages that he acquires? | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: Of course, in the nineteenth century the Scottish poor did, going to America, which welcomed the poor, and spoke English. Hume's point is the right reply to anyone who says 'If you don't like it, go elsewhere'. Also 'No! Change it!' |
| 21102 | We all know that the history of property is founded on injustices [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as land or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.288) | |
| A reaction: A prime objection to Nozick, who fantasises about an initial position of just ownership, which can then be the subject of just contracts. In 1866 thousands of white people were granted land in the USA, but not a single black freed slave got anything. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |