the only easy day was yesterday

Thursday, December 20, 2007

another essay idea. im busy, so for now: temporality and the threory of justified true belief. im not a huge fan of the world as an external entity, which is really pressupposed for plato, but the gettier objections to it i think try to point out that it is not a practical theory because that world outside us would change, rather than the world that is 'open' and is where we are, is something we can know and judge only in the ways it lets us. i am not justified in calling a friend whos home i visited a few months ago and havent talked to since, and taking his word for it when i call his home number and he says hes home, he could well have moved in the months since weve spoken, but if i see mount vesuvius, and months later, i think about it, and make the statement 'mount vesuvius is beautiful' i would be jutified because mountains dont move nearly as often as people do. this is subject to the world at hand (thats a heideggerian expression which i may be using in the wrong context), that is, the world as it is disclosed to me, the world that is relevant to me, that i see and i know and i experience in; i know that real estate is a sketchy thing now and the housing market is crazy, so people are moving like crazy because they couldnt afford their mortgages, but a few hundred years ago, people stayed relatively put, nuclear familys lived mostly in the same spot, if they had phones, it wouldve been markedly more justified asking the same question because people move less. i think ill go to town on this idea a little later...

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