Let Loose the Analogous Hounds
“Why not say that knowledge is true belief? The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such beliefs happen to be true. Suppose William takes a medication that has the following side effect: it causes him to be overcome with irrational fears. One of his fears is that he has cancer. This fear is so powerful that he starts believing it. Suppose further that, by sheer coincidence, he does have cancer. So his belief is true. Clearly, though, his belief does not amount to knowledge. But why not? Most epistemologists would agree that William does not know because his belief’s truth is due to luck (bad luck, in this case). Let us refer to a belief’s turning out to be true because of mere luck as epistemic luck. It is uncontroversial that knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck. What, though, is needed to rule out epistemic luck? Advocates of the JTB account would say that what is needed is justification. A true belief, if an instance of knowledge and thus not true because of epistemic luck, must be justified. But what is it for a belief to be justified?[2]” Steup, Matthias, “The Analysis of Knowledge”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/knowledge-analysis/>.
“Hume proceeds first negatively, to show that our causal inferences are not due to reason, or any operation of the understanding. Reasoning concerns either relations of ideas or matters of fact. Hume quickly establishes that, whatever assures us that a causal relation obtains, it is not reasoning concerning relations between ideas. Effects are distinct events from their causes: we can always conceive of one such event occurring and the other not. So causal reasoning can’t be a priori reasoning. Causes and effects are discovered, not by reason but through experience, when we find that particular objects are constantly conjoined with one another. We tend to overlook this because most ordinary causal judgments are so familiar; we’ve made them so many times that our judgment seems immediate. But when we consider the matter, we realize that “an (absolutely) unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all” (EHU, 45n). Even in applied mathematics, where we use abstract reasoning and geometrical methods to apply principles we regard as laws to particular cases in order to derive further principles as consequences of these laws, the discovery of the original law itself was due to experience and observation, not to a priori reasoning. Even after we have experience of causal connections, our conclusions from those experiences aren’t based on any reasoning or on any other process of the understanding. They are based on our past experiences of similar cases, without which we could draw no conclusions at all.” Morris, William Edward, “David Hume”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/hume/>.
“Epistemic contextualism (EC) is a recent and hotly debated position. In its dominant form, EC is the view that the proposition expressed by a given knowledge sentence (‘S knows that p’, ‘S doesn’t know that p’) depends upon the context in which it is uttered. What makes this view interesting and controversial is that ‘context’ here refers, not to certain features of the putative subject of knowledge (his/her evidence, history, other beliefs, etc.) or his/her objective situation (what is true/false, which alternatives to what is believed are likely to obtain, etc.), but rather to features of the knowledge attributor(s)’ psychology and/or conversational-practical situation. (Hence this view’s sometimes being referred to as ‘attributor contextualism’.) As a result of such context-dependence, utterances of a given such sentence, made in different contexts, may differ in truth value.” Rysiew, Patrick, “Epistemic Contextualism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/contextualism-epistemology/>. “The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains. The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to prevent that.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45306416/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-yes/#.T43EGpi1l8I
“Thomas the Apostle, also called Doubting Thomas or Didymus (meaning “Twin,” as does “Thomas” in Aramaic”) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He is best known for questioning Jesus’ resurrection when first told of it, then proclaiming “My Lord and my God” on seeing Jesus inJohn 20:28. He was perhaps the only Apostle who went outside the Roman Empire to preach the Gospel. He is also believed to have crossed the largest area, which includes the Parthian Empire andIndia.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle
“These puzzles of antiquity are now more usually described as paradoxes. Though the conundrum can be presented informally as a series of questions whose puzzling nature gives it dialectical force, it can be, and was, presented as a formal argument having logical structure. The following argument form of the sorites was common: 1 grain of wheat does not make a heap. If 1 grain of wheat does not make a heap then 2 grains of wheat do not. If 2 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 3 grains do not. … If 9,999 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 10,000 do not.10,000 grains of wheat do not make a heap. The argument certainly seems to be valid, employing only modus ponens and cut (enabling the chaining together of each sub-argument which results from a single application of modus ponens). These rules of inference are endorsed by both Stoic logic and modern classical logic, amongst others.” Hyde, Dominic, “Sorites Paradox”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/sorites-paradox/>.
“An understanding of the concept of moral responsibility and its application is present implicitly in some of the earliest surviving Greek texts, i.e., the Homeric epics (circa 8th century BCE but no doubt informed by a much earlier oral tradition).[4] In these texts, both human and superhuman agents are often regarded as fair targets of praise and blame on the basis of how they have behaved, and at other times, an agent’s behavior is excused because of the presence of some factor that has undermined his/her control (Irwin 1999: 225). Reflection on these factors gave rise to fatalism—the view that one’s future or some aspect of it is predetermined, e.g., by the gods, or the stars, or simply some facts about truth and time—in such a way as to make one’s particular deliberations, choices and actions irrelevant to whether that particular future is realized (recall, e.g., the plight of Oedipus). If some particular outcome is fated, then it seems that the agent concerned could not be morally responsible for that outcome. Likewise, if fatalism were true with respect to all human futures, then it would seem that no human agent could be morally responsible for anything. Though this brand of fatalism has sometimes exerted significant historical influence, most philosophers have rejected it on the grounds that there is no good reason to think that our futures are fated in the sense that they will unfold no matter what particular deliberations we engage in, choices we make, or actions we perform.” Eshleman, Andrew, “Moral Responsibility”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/moral-responsibility/>.
“In a famous discussion, Hilary Putnam has us consider a special version of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis. Imagine that you are a brain in a vat in a world in which the only objects are brains, a vat, and a laboratory containing supercomputers that stimulate the envatted brains. Imagine further that this situation has arisen completely randomly, and that the brains have always been envatted. No evil neuroscientists or renegade machines have brought about the brains’ envatment. Call such a special brain in a vat a ‘BIV’. A skeptical argument just like that above can be formulated using the BIV hypothesis. Putting things now in the first person, Putnam argues that I can establish that I am not a BIV by appeal to semantic considerations alone—considerations concerning reference and truth. This will block the BIV version of the skeptical argument. Here is how Putnam motivates his anti-skeptical semantic considerations. Suppose that there are no trees on Mars and that a Martian forms a mental image exactly resembling one of my tree-images as a result of perceiving a blob of paint that accidentally resembles a tree. Putnam’s intuition is that the Martian’s image is not a representation of a tree. This is due to the lack of any causal connection between the image and trees (even, we will suppose, any attenuated causal connection such as interaction with a visiting Earthling who has seen trees). If I were a BIV, then my mental image resembling a tree would no more be a representation of a tree than would the Martian’s mental image. Neither of us would have the sort of causal contact with trees which is required for our images to refer to trees. The same reasoning applies to any tokens of the word ‘tree’ which might come to be uttered (or thought) by the Martian and by the BIV. (In speaking about BIVs, we will use ‘utter’ to mean, in effect, ‘seem to utter’, since a BIV cannot speak or write, but only seems to himself to be speaking or writing. Similar remarks apply to ‘speak’.)” Brueckner, Tony, “Skepticism and Content Externalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/>.
“Kripke (1980) famously argues that because a rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds, an identity statement in which the identity sign is flanked by two rigid designators must be necessarily true if it is true at all, even if the statement is not a priori. His classic example is the identity statement ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’, which is true, but which was discovered a posteriori to be true. ‘Hesperus’ is a name that was given to a heavenly body seen in the evening, and ‘Phosphorus’ is a name that was, unknown to the first users of the name, given to that same heavenly body seen in the morning. The heavenly body is Venus. One might initially suppose that since the statement ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ was only discovered empirically to be true, it must be contingently true. But, says Kripke, it is necessarily true. The only respect in which it might have turned out false is not metaphysical but epistemic: thus, one could as well say of a geometrical theorem before it is proven that it might or might not turn out to be true or that it might or might not be provable without the parallels postulate. But if it is true and is provable without the parallels postulate, that is a matter of metaphysical necessity. In the same way, if the statement ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is true, that is a matter of metaphysical necessity. ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is necessarily true if true at all because ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are proper names for the same object. Like other names, Kripke maintains, they are rigid: each designates just the object it actually designates in all possible worlds in which that object exists, and it designates nothing else in any possible world. The object that ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ name in all possible worlds is Venus. Since ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ both name Venus in all possible worlds, and since Venus = Venus in all possible worlds, ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is true in all possible worlds.” LaPorte, Joseph, “Rigid Designators”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/rigid-designators/>.
“The further development of this example involves the case, where the fat man is, in fact, the villain who put these five people in peril. In this instance, pushing the villain to his death, especially to save five innocent people, seems not just moral, but, to some, also just and even an imperative. This is essentially related to another famous thought experiment, known as ticking time bomb scenario, which forces one to choose between two morally questionable acts. Several papers argue that ticking time bomb scenario is a mere variation of the trolley problem.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem