Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Justified Belief as Responsible Belief' and 'Theology and Verification'

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

---

8 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence

12801	Coherentists seek relations among beliefs that are simple, conservative and explanatory [Foley]
	Full Idea: Coherentists try to provide an explication of epistemic rationality in terms of a set of deductive and probabilistic relations among beliefs and properties such as simplicity, conservativeness, and explanatory power.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.317)
	A reaction: I have always like the coherentist view of justification, and now I see that this has led me to the question of explanation, which in turn has led me to essentialism. It's all coming together. Watch this space. 'Explanatory' is the key to everything!

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / c. Disjunctivism

12800	Externalists want to understand knowledge, Internalists want to understand justification [Foley]
	Full Idea: Externalists are principally interested in understanding what knowledge is, ..while internalists, by contrast, are principally interested in explicating a sense of justification ..from one's own perspective.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.314)
	A reaction: I find this very helpful, since I have a strong bias towards internalism (with a social dimension), and I see now that it is because I am more interested in what a (good) justification is than what some entity in reality called 'knowledge' consists of.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 2. Pragmatic justification

12802	We aren't directly pragmatic about belief, but pragmatic about the deliberation which precedes it [Foley]
	Full Idea: It is rare for pragmatic considerations to influence the rationality of our beliefs in the crass, direct way that Pascal's Wager envisions. Instead, they determine the direction and shape of our investigative and deliberative projects and practices.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.320)
	A reaction: [See Idea 6684 for Pascal's Wager] Foley is evidently a full-blown pragmatist (which is bad), but this is nicely put. We can't deny the importance of the amount of effort put into an enquiry. Maybe it is an epistemic duty, rather than a means to an end.

12803	Justification comes from acceptable procedures, given practical constraints [Foley]
	Full Idea: One justifiably believes a proposition if one has an epistemically rational belief that one's procedures with respect to it have been acceptable, given practical limitations, and one's goals.
	From: Richard Foley (Justified Belief as Responsible Belief [2005], p.322)
	A reaction: I quite like this, except that it is too individualistic. My goals, and my standards of acceptability decree whether I know? I don't see the relevance of goals; only a pragmatist would mention such a thing. Standards of acceptability are social.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

7903	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').

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / c. Religious Verification

1471	It may be hard to verify that we have become immortal, but we could still then verify religious claims [Hick, by PG]
	Full Idea: Verification of religious claims after death is only possible if the concept of surviving death is intelligible, and we can understand the concept of immortality, despite difficulties in being certain that we had reached it.
	From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], IV) by PG - Db (ideas)

1470	Belief in an afterlife may be unverifiable in this life, but it will be verifiable after death [Hick, by PG]
	Full Idea: Religion is capable of 'eschatological verification', by reaching evidence at the end of life, even though falsification of its claims is never found in this life; a prediction of coming to a Celestial City must await the end of the journey.
	From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], III) by PG - Db (ideas)

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / d. Religious Falsification

1469	Some things (e.g. a section of the expansion of PI) can be verified but not falsified [Hick, by PG]
	Full Idea: Falsification and verification are not logically equivalent. For example, you might verify the claim that there will be three consecutive sevens in the infinite expansion of PI, but you could never falsify such a claim.
	From: report of John Hick (Theology and Verification [1960], §II) by PG - Db (ideas)