Evolution Tautology 6: A resolution 3 Sep 200922 Jun 2018 If, as Byerly and Michod think, along with many others such as Brandon (1990), there are two kinds of “fitness”; actual and expected, and only with actual fitness is there any possibility of a tautology, we need to work out what expected fitness is. Brandon calls it “adaptedness” proper; a… Read More
Philosophy Defining religion 27 Oct 2009 In line with my putting passing thoughts down as they occur to me, in this post I will discuss some of the questions regarding how to define religion such that it becomes an explicandum for natural accounts of religion. Read More
Epistemology The Philosophers' Menu 4 May 2010 The Philosophers’ Menu Presuppositions. Kantelope Assorted carnaps Pareto soup Hart-boyled eggs with a rescher of bacon Major Premises Jugged hare, with milled popper Skinnered peacocke, with nashed paretos Plato’ the Day Humeburger, with gibbard gravy Frankfurts and schauer kraut Bass van frassen [sic] Nagels and lockes Frege legs with russell… Read More
Don’t know Gettier. But let me guess: Et hoc principium nominat Philosophus, in III DE anima, intellectum possibilem. ?
It is possible The Philosopher always said it first (he’s like the Ernst Mayr of philosophy). However, I fail to see the connection here with what Thomas says here…
I supposed that the problem is how do we know that we know, e.g. reflexion. Here the intelllectus possibilis was proposed by Aristotle and Scholastics. It is also the place where reflexion should take place, the following interesting quotation also from De anima: Species enim intelligibilis est quo intellectus intelligit, non id quod intelligit, nisi per reflexionem, in quantum intelligit se intelligere et id quod quo intelligit.
Well, perhaps you can help me out with a confusion I’ve got myself into. ISTM that in “justified true belief”, the word “true” implies either access to ideal and infallible knowledge (which, not being God, we can’t ever have), or is just a synonym (and therefore redundant) for a very high level of justification. We can approach certainty asymptotically, but never quite get there. On this account, “true” doesn’t belong in the definition, and we declare we have “knowledge” when justification passes a certain threshold (say, when we’ve seen whatever it is up close with our own eyes, and everyone present agrees about it). Am I misunderstanding something about the way epistemologists use the terms?
It’s a very long time since I did any formal epistemology but I’ll have an ignorant crack at it. I gather that what makes something knowledge, under the JTB view, is that it is true, not that we know or could warrantably think it is true. So if it is true but we are not justified in thinking it is true, is isn’t known, and if we are justified in thinking it is true but it isn’t, it isn’t known. Pragmatists like me do not have this problem, as it only occurs under a correspondence theory of truth. We think that knowing just is being justified in a claim through experience; so your point is fine by us. We also think that truth is a property of pragmatic interactions between cognisers and the world. But don’t believe me – as I say it’s been a while. Try here instead.
Thank you; it’s helpful to know that what seems to be the “standard” JTB view is not universally enforced by the Philosophy Cartel.
I am an official member of the Philosophy Cartel and I endorse this message. (Except for the pragmatism bit, anyhow.) The JTB theory hasn’t been standard since shortly after Gettier’s example, in which Jones has JTB, but lacks knowledge. Now, one of the few things you can get philosophers to agree on is that JTB != knowledge.