Monthly Archives: January 2008

Nozick’s truth-tracking

Published January 15, 2008
Okay! Brace yourselves for a tricky piece of work. (Well, it was tricky for me…) I’ll do my best to give an accurate summary of Robert Nozick’s counterfactual account of knowledge, but there may be some slight errors. Basically, Nozick is suggesting that knowledge is belief that tracks the truth. Recall our JTB account of […]
Posted in Philosophy | 4 Comments

Gettier Cases

Published January 14, 2008
Gettier cases! Cases of our beloved Justified True Belief (JTB) account of knowledge gone wrong! Edmund Gettier famously gave several short examples of cases where I could have a true belief that was justified – all 3 of our conditions for knowledge – yet not actually know. How could this be!? Take a gander at […]
Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Justified True Belief

Published January 13, 2008
As we saw last time, the standard Closure Argument for knowledge seems to hold some problems. Indeed, it even gives fuel to the skeptic in her attempts to shake us up in her claim that we can’t know a great many of the things we think we do.
Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Closure Argument

Published January 13, 2008
Okay! Back into Philosophy again. The focus over the next few days will be Epistemology (the theory of knowledge). I wrote a little about the origins of modern Epistemology some time ago. Remember Descartes and his Evil Demons? Go and read it for a light introduction to some of the worries we have with regard […]
Posted in Philosophy | 1 Comment

Left-brain Right-brain

Published January 11, 2008
Which side of your brain is the dominant side? I’m sure you’ve heard this question before or taken some sort of psychological test that is supposed to show it. I certainly have, but I’ve never seen one quite as amazing as this! Take a look at the picture below and tell me which way it’s […]
Posted in Journal | 6 Comments

Moral Anti-Realism

Published January 9, 2008
Moral Anti-Realists tell a different story to that of Moral Realists. According to them, there are no moral facts or properties. If so, what are we doing when we say moral statements such as ‘murder is wrong’? To be an Anti-Realist, we are looking to reject one or more of the premises in the Correspondence […]
Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Moral Realism

Published January 9, 2008
Let’s begin the debate by focussing on the possibility that there are objectively existing moral facts. Realist views accept the existence of objective moral properties. To put this in perspective, think about what this would be saying. When we make moral statements such as ‘murder is bad’, we talk as though there are moral facts […]
Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

Ersatz Modal Realism

Published January 9, 2008
Also known as ‘Moderate’ or ‘Actualist’ Modal Realism. Unlike Lewis’s Genuine Modal Realism, EMR has varied tenets and thus I will only outline some of the differences to GMR. In contrast to Lewis’s GMR, EMR theories do not take other possible worlds to be concretely existing (the main reason for not wanting to accept Lewis’s […]
Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments