Philosophy I wonder what it *is* that I actually do? 14 Oct 2010 A note on credit: I have been accused elsewhere of having leached off Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zack Weiner, whose cartoons I often use. Zack has not complained, and I am using the code he generates at his site, unmodified, and the images are from his site, not reposted… Read More
Biology Articles of faith: The theological and philosophical origins of the concept of species 22 Oct 201329 Oct 2013 It takes a while for the implications of one’s own work to sink in. In my 2009 book Species, a History of the Idea (see here), I argued that the notion that before Darwin people were essentialistic and fixist about species was false. A recent paper by Jack Powers about Mayr’s misreading… Read More
Administrative Are you a HPS scholar? 30 Apr 2011 If so I invite you to join our group blog Whewell’s Ghost, even if you already blog. You can either write for WG directly or repost some or all of your blog’s posts with alink back to your home blog, thereby increasing your readership. Contact me or the other WG… 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.