In Leiter’s blog, there is discussion of Colin McGinn’s recent review of Ted Honderich’s On Consciousness (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) from Philosophical Review, vol. 116, no. 3 (2007). Leiter pulls the following quote from the review:
This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad. It is painful to read, poorly thought out, and uninformed. It is also radically inconsistent….
I have recently been reading Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations and he briefly discusses the justification of mathematical beliefs (he relates it to his tracking theory). Anyway, this made me think about how beliefs about math and basic logical principles are justified. For instance, consider: ‘1+1=2′ or ‘A=A’ I am definitely justified in believing these to be true, but how am I justified? Let’s set aside testimony, so assume that I come to see the truth of ‘A=A’ on my own, i.e. without anyone telling me it is true. Let’s also set aside externalist theories of justification (Andrew I still want to hear your thoughts!!!) What justifies this belief? Is it the case that the only justification that I have for believing that ‘A=A’ is seeming evidence? If so, what is it about the seeming evidence in this case that makes it so much stronger than seeming evidence concerning memory or perception? Thoughts?
Suppose Demo demolishes a building with the intent of killing kids in the building, and suppose he has good reason to think that there are kids in the building. Has he done something wrong? Well, if there were kids in the building, then Demo has killed children, and he has obviously done something wrong.
What if there were no kids? Has he done something wrong? What? He hasn’t performed the wrong act of killing kids because he didn’t kill any kids. The action of demolishing a building itself doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that’s wrong. The only thing I can pin down as something he has done that is wrong is the action of trying to kill kids. Does this sound right?
Show-Me bloggers have debated the Dumbledore issue here. On the lighter side…
Several epistemologists (both internalists and externalists) endorse normative defeaters. Does the endorsement of normative defeaters commit one to endorsing evidentialism? Consider the following.
Jennifer Lackey provides the following definition of normative defeater (The epistemology of testimony pg. 4):
“A normative defeater is a doubt or belief that S ought to have, yet indicates that S’s belief that p is either false or unreliably formed or sustained. Defeaters in this sense function by virtue of being doubts or beliefs that S should have (whether or not S does have them) given the presence of certain available evidence.”
Conee and Feldman have this to say about (more…)
I need an example: can anyone think of a substantive philosophical thesis that does not rely on an intuition? There are a few terms below the fold. Thanks in advance for your help on this. (more…)