Is cussing wrong? Abstinence from cussing is a norm we learn from an early age. But on reflection, why is cussing wrong if it is wrong?
While it’s hard to define what cussing is, we can give a few examples: f*ck, sh*t, b*tch, a$$. (more…)
Archive for August, 2005
Is Cussing Wrong?
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005Does justification require good reasons?
Saturday, August 27th, 2005It seems to me that the following thesis should be uncontroversial.
(GR) A belief is epistemically justified only if there are good reasons for thinking that the content of the belief is true.
It should be uncontroversial because it doesn’t say what counts as a good reason or whether one needs some sort of awareness of the good reasons (more…)
Your money or you’re ignorance
Sunday, August 21st, 2005I have a question concerning the value of knowledge prompted by Andrew’s last two posts, some of the comments it recieved, and conversations with Andrew and Ted at the party on Saturday. I should say up front that I am unfortunately not up on the relevant literature–all I’ve read is the *excellent* “Why Enquiring Minds Should Want to Know” by our own Jon Kvanvig.
Suppose you meet someone who gives you what you are convinced is a list of 50 beliefs you hosted yesterday. The beliefs cover a wide range of topics. This person then convinces you that she can tell you which of those beliefs were true, and she does. She then convinces you that, for every sense of justified, she can tell you which of those beliefs were justified, and she does. Now she convinces you she can tell you which of those beliefs were items of knowledge, but she will only do this for a price. My question is whether you would be willing to pay a little, a lot, or nothing to have her do this, and why.
JB
Warrant Infallibilism (pt. 2)
Saturday, August 20th, 2005Linda Zagzebski has argued that any account of warrant that does not entail truth is susceptible to Gettier counterexamples. For example, it was once standardly believed that justification is sufficient for warrant. Zagzebski would say that if justification does not entail truth, then justification cannot be sufficient for warrant. This is true even if the justification for p is extremely good and there is only an extremely small chance that p is false. Suppose Smith has extremely strong justification for (more…)
Swinburne on the perfect goodness of God
Thursday, August 18th, 2005Short version: Swinburne argues that, by necessity, any being that is both perfectly free and omniscient will be perfectly good. I think this argument makes an equivocation on the word ‘good’. I’m interested to see if anyone can help me see what I’m missing here.
Long version: In The Existence of God, Richard Swinburne presents a comprehensive case for the probability that the traditional theistic God exists. His basic strategy employs confirmation theory to show that theism is a better explanation for “the datum” (including the data that there is a universe, that the causal laws are simple, that there are certain moral goods in the world, that we are personal agents, etc.) than any other rival hypothesis. Part of his strategy relies on showing that the theistic hypothesis is a simple one. To that end, he wants to posit just a few of the traditional properties of God and show that other traditional properties are entailed by these. First some definitions (more…)
Warrant Infallibilism
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005I’ve been working on a paper on warrant infallibilism all summer. Hopefully, this post will help motivate some thinking so that I can get help on it!
Following Alvin Plantinga, define warrant as that property, whatever it is, which turns true belief into knowledge. So for Plantinga, by definition, a true belief that is warranted is knowledge.
In PPR 1995, Trenton Merricks set forth two arguments that warrant entails truth (and is therefore, infallible). I’ll present the first one here and see if there’s any interest in the topic. (more…)