Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Concepts of supervenience' and 'Reliabilism'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


5 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / a. Nature of supervenience
Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim]
     Full Idea: Each supervenient property necessarily has a coextensive property in the base family.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Concepts of supervenience [1984], §5)
     A reaction: This is presumably the minimum requirement for a situation of supervenience. How do you decide which property is the 'base' property? Do we just mean that the base causes the other, but not vice versa?
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge
Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: The best definition of reliabilism seems to be: the agent has evidence, and bases the belief on the evidence, and the actual conditional reliability of the belief on the evidence is high enough.
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.4)
     A reaction: This is Comesaņa's own theory, derived from Alston 1998, and based on conditional probabilities.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / b. Anti-reliabilism
In a sceptical scenario belief formation is unreliable, so no beliefs at all are justified? [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: If the processes of belief-formation are unreliable (perhaps in a sceptical scenario), then reliabilism has the consequence that those victims can never have justified beliefs (which Sosa calls the 'new evil demon problem').
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.1)
     A reaction: That may be the right outcome. Could you have mathematical knowledge in a sceptical scenario? But that would be different processes. If I might be a brain in a vat, then it's true that I have no perceptual knowledge.
How do we decide which exact process is the one that needs to be reliable? [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: The reliabilist has the problem of finding a principled way of selecting, for each token-process of belief formation, the type whose reliability ratio must be high enough for the belief to be justified.
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.3)
     A reaction: The question is which exact process I am employing for some visual knowledge (and how the process should be described). Seeing, staring, squinting, glancing.... This seems to be called the 'generality problem'.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').