You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Ludwig V

Comments

Yes, that's quite right. I think, though, that philosophers have always been more interested in how new knowledge is acquired, so tend to focus on tha...
October 02, 2025 at 17:22
The search for definitions is often a matter of codifying what we actually do. It is a very hard thing to do perfectly, partly because the rigidity th...
October 02, 2025 at 12:55
OK. It's just that it seems to me that there are always endless ways to screw things up, but very few to get things just right. Though some mistakes m...
October 02, 2025 at 12:31
I'm very much in sympathy with the sentiment. But Kant was right not to mention Berkeley here. He does distinguish between those experiences which hav...
October 02, 2025 at 08:06
Of course, there's "know that .." and "know how ..". I'm not sure about "know of..". Perhaps knowledge by acquaintance as well? Whether you want a for...
September 30, 2025 at 13:31
In general, that's right. It depends on the project. But sometimes the aim of the project is truth, so in those cases mistake does imply the (possibil...
September 30, 2025 at 12:47
OK. Then can you tell me anything about the other meanings?
September 29, 2025 at 18:46
Yes, we are agreed about that. But now, what is my body, and what yours? How do we tell the difference> I think that it is implicit in what W says tha...
September 29, 2025 at 18:44
That's quite a tall order. But still, if they can all be determined as mistakes, it follows that there must be a truth of the matter, beyond appearanc...
September 29, 2025 at 18:32
You are right. It makes a lot of difference what the context is. My apologies if someone else has responded while I've been away. JTB amounts to a pro...
September 28, 2025 at 13:00
Kant is right to emphasize that appearances are always appearances of something. But he does not press the consequences of this observation. It sets u...
September 28, 2025 at 08:45
It's fascinating to see how W moves from distinguishing between the "common-sense philosopher" and the "common-sense man" to discussing the argument b...
September 27, 2025 at 09:56
That's circular. You can only satisfy the JTB if you know that X is true. That is indeed a problem. But we can't solve all the problems at the same ti...
September 23, 2025 at 21:31
I do accept that there may be some qualifications and caveats and that it seems very hard for fallibilism to escape from the problem that we can't be ...
September 23, 2025 at 10:40
I'm glad you think so. I'm acutely aware that further explanation is needed. One issue is to sort out the difference between his use of "expression" i...
September 22, 2025 at 18:33
H'mm. Maybe. But I think you may be getting into an unnecessary tangle because you (seem to be) focused on the special case of "I know that I know.." ...
September 22, 2025 at 10:10
If knowledge were a matter of accumulated atomic pieces, then you are right. But it isn't. We learn how to do colour and at least some of the colours ...
September 21, 2025 at 09:53
I'm a bit confused by all this. Someone passes on to me a piece of information. Normally, I would just accept what I'm told because this informant is ...
September 20, 2025 at 17:49
It isn't. Which is why the relationship between the object of the belief and the mental state of the believer is not a causal relationship. That's a v...
September 20, 2025 at 09:15
Yes. That's not an accident. But what I'm especially interested in is, put it this way, the glitches in natural language that require us to develop or...
September 19, 2025 at 09:24
H'm. I can see that one might use the words in those ways. But I would have called what you call the brute given, what I know by introspection, and ca...
September 19, 2025 at 08:55
I'm not sure whether you are talking logic or child development here. But it seems to me that, from a child development perspective, this must be righ...
September 19, 2025 at 08:28
This is spot on. But I don't think it is just pedantry. I don't think there is any mistake at all. You are presenting a tediously familiar philosophic...
September 19, 2025 at 07:44
Okay. Presumably someone has to bring me food and drink and take away my waste. Do they come in to the room or push it in through a hatch. Do we talk ...
September 18, 2025 at 20:04
I'm afraid I didn't realize that. Fair enough. Does that mean that you are thinking of seeing the pink elephant as introspection and so immune from mi...
September 18, 2025 at 17:46
I.ve been around long enough to know the difference and to know what a fly is.
September 18, 2025 at 17:29
Each to their own.
September 18, 2025 at 17:28
OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be?
September 18, 2025 at 14:41
What's the evidence that it is? No, you can work it out. If it is, say, a fly in the room, it is unlikely to change much outside the room. If it is a ...
September 18, 2025 at 11:53
I'm not sure that I'm interpreting the tradition, because that suggests that it makes sense. That's what I question. If I'm right, there is no metaphy...
September 18, 2025 at 09:47
I think we are still talking past each other. I take your point that there is an entailment involved and that this must involve two propositions. I al...
September 18, 2025 at 07:48
But Smith is using "the man who will get the job" to refer to Jones. Since Jones will not get the job, Smith's deduction is based on a false premiss a...
September 17, 2025 at 09:11
That's not an unreasonable idea. Nonetheless, if it turns out that we are wrong, we are expected to withdraw the claim to knowledge. I may be said to ...
September 16, 2025 at 13:21
It's not all that strange. A standard use of "justify" does indeed assume that if P is false, then there is no justification for believing that p. But...
September 16, 2025 at 13:09
Actually, my understanding (admittedly based on encyclopedias) that there is a distinction iin Kant between the noumenon and Being-in-itself. But I'm ...
September 16, 2025 at 12:48
You are right that there is at least one sense in which justification and truth rise or fall together. But Gettier's argument assumes that they do not...
September 15, 2025 at 23:08
I'm afraid I'm somewhat handicapped here, in that I don't really understand what reality-in-itself is. I mostly understand Reality as everything and a...
September 15, 2025 at 21:17
That's a very interesting idea, but, as you say, it isn't quite clear how all of them might be fitted together. One might start by observing that empi...
September 15, 2025 at 09:36
I'm not sure whether you are talking about the picture as a shadow-object (the illusion that W is trying to show is superfluous), or about the relevan...
September 11, 2025 at 08:57
That is what I was suggesting. Not quite that. It would be incautious of me to deny the possibiity of non-standard uses of "general" and "generality"....
September 08, 2025 at 09:44
Yes. But you seem to me to be laying down an essence of "same" and using that as a rule which outlaws the ways in which we actually use "general" and ...
September 07, 2025 at 16:28
The answer to idealism, in a nutshell. I think of it, not as a repetition of something stored, but as a recreation, in which each element is added bec...
September 07, 2025 at 08:09
Thank you for that quotation. I guess Hume will survive being turned on his head. It is no more than what he tried to do to the "Schoolmen". But Newma...
September 06, 2025 at 20:26
I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each ot...
September 06, 2025 at 08:33
I think this discussion is getting too complicated. I would like to set aside the historical debate. However, I can’t resist two observations – I don’...
September 05, 2025 at 13:31
OK. Would you mind explaining what the arguments are that you consider to be quite strong? I’m intrigued by the idea of appetites associated with reas...
September 04, 2025 at 13:31
Broadly, that's ok with me. I'm a bit puzzled about what "swallowed up" means here. We only ever encounter particular houses and particular people. Ev...
September 04, 2025 at 11:00
I wasn’t suggesting that descriptions involving values are actually commands. I was pointing out that descriptions involving values are also commands,...
September 04, 2025 at 08:56
Yes, indeed - even millennia old. So why do you think that the fact/value distinction is a distinctive error of empiricism - or even an error at all? ...
September 03, 2025 at 08:57
I'm glad you mention that. I agree with you, and there should not be a problem about recognizing that Homer sometimes nods. I still have no way of shi...
September 02, 2025 at 18:43