PHIL 2003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Columbia University Press, Physical Cosmology, Health Canada
26 Jul 2019
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Beliefs based on good reasons are more likely to be true than beliefs based on bad reasons. Compare the belief that a politician is honest, based on her past track-record of honesty, with the belief that a politician is honest, based merely on his avowals of honesty as he runs for office. Beliefs based on good reasons promote out survival better than beliefs based on bad reasons. As the prominent 20th century harvard logician and philosopher w. v. o. Quine once put it: creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind ( natural kinds, in ontological relativity and other essays (new york: Beliefs based on good reasons make for greater psychological stability than beliefs based on bad reasons. Compare the belief that the physical universe came into existence less than. Beliefs based on good reasons are more characteristic of morally responsible people than beliefs based on bad reasons.
