Comments on: Generality of Gettier Judgments http://jonathanichikawa.net/weblog/generality-of-gettier-judgments/ Jonathan Ichikawa's website Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:33:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 By: Joachim Horvath http://jonathanichikawa.net/weblog/generality-of-gettier-judgments/#comment-151 Joachim Horvath Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:46:55 +0000 http://jonathanichikawa.net/?p=139#comment-151 Why can't Zagzebski simply arrive at her general point based on an induction from the many Gettier-type cases in the literature? This seems to be an obvious alternative explanation that doesn't require the generality of her insight to be already there as a prior implicit theory (after all, most of our theories are not already "Platonically encoded" in our brains). For, if one reflects on the different Gettier-type cases (Smith and the Ford, Brown in Barcelona, Henry in fake barn county, etc.), she seems to do a pretty good job in summing up what they all have in common. Why can’t Zagzebski simply arrive at her general point based on an induction from the many Gettier-type cases in the literature? This seems to be an obvious alternative explanation that doesn’t require the generality of her insight to be already there as a prior implicit theory (after all, most of our theories are not already “Platonically encoded” in our brains). For, if one reflects on the different Gettier-type cases (Smith and the Ford, Brown in Barcelona, Henry in fake barn county, etc.), she seems to do a pretty good job in summing up what they all have in common.

]]> By: Yuri Cath http://jonathanichikawa.net/weblog/generality-of-gettier-judgments/#comment-149 Yuri Cath Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:59:05 +0000 http://jonathanichikawa.net/?p=139#comment-149 Nice post! On this passage: “Our initial Gettier judgment constituted a kind of commitment to a general principle that rules out the kind of luck that Zagzebski is focusing on. If that’s right, then metaphilosophical emphasis on cases may be misplaced; lots more of our thought experiment judgments may be more based on theory than is always realized.” The idea that our particular case judgements about thought experiments are (in some sense) guided by, or express our commitment to, implicitly grasped principles or theories sounds reasonable to me. (Does anyone deny this?) But I'm not seeing much, if any, tension between this idea and the idea that our judgments about particular cases do and/or should play a central role in philosophical methodology. Suppose that our particular case judgments are always based on our implicit commitment to, or grasp of, some principle or theory. Presumably, it will often be very difficult for us to fully and explicitly articulate or recover these implicit/tacit principles. In which case, we may often be in the position of being (rightly) more confident in our judgments about particular cases than we are in our judgments about what the implicit principles are which govern those particular case judgements. Hence, we may often think it is more important for a theory to accord with the former kind of judgments than the latter. Nice post! On this passage:

“Our initial Gettier judgment constituted a kind of commitment to a general principle that rules out the kind of luck that Zagzebski is focusing on. If that’s right, then metaphilosophical emphasis on cases may be misplaced; lots more of our thought experiment judgments may be more based on theory than is always realized.”

The idea that our particular case judgements about thought experiments are (in some sense) guided by, or express our commitment to, implicitly grasped principles or theories sounds reasonable to me. (Does anyone deny this?)

But I’m not seeing much, if any, tension between this idea and the idea that our judgments about particular cases do and/or should play a central role in philosophical methodology. Suppose that our particular case judgments are always based on our implicit commitment to, or grasp of, some principle or theory. Presumably, it will often be very difficult for us to fully and explicitly articulate or recover these implicit/tacit principles. In which case, we may often be in the position of being (rightly) more confident in our judgments about particular cases than we are in our judgments about what the implicit principles are which govern those particular case judgements. Hence, we may often think it is more important for a theory to accord with the former kind of judgments than the latter.

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