PHI 3170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Otto Neurath, Coherence Theory, Neurathian Bootstrap
13 Dec 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Otto neurath: the raft metaphor you can never do what descartes purports to do (general demolition of beliefs). All we can do is modify some beliefs by keeping the rest of them intact. You"re cognitively encountering beliefs about sense perceptions: coherence theories of truth. Radical - what actually makes a belief true or false, is whether or not it coheres with other beliefs. Others beliefs are the only thing you can compare a belief to. How our beliefs hang together in terms of their justifications. A belief is justified if it coheres with the rest of my beliefs. Ideal coherence: recapitulation of objections to foundationalism. Coherence theories are holist (evaluating individual members of their relation to the whole set). 3. 2 denial of incorrigibility of self-evident beliefs (wittgenstein, sellars) Denial that inferences from self-evident beliefs are infallible. Questioning the soundness of foundationalist strategy given 3. 3. 1 if inferences from foundational beliefs are fallible.
