The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, (...) e. g., ‘Cartesian’, accounts. (shrink)

A collection of essays by contemporary Calvinist philosophers of religion that examine the epistemology of religious belief between Reformed and Roman Catholic philosophers.

This new edition of the classic Contemporary Theories of Knowledge has been significantly updated to include analyses of the recent literature in epistemology.

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat”, I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong. The present paper explores whether this consistency-based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on beliefs we (...) already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory-based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency-based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks. (shrink)

A major objection to epistemic infinitism is that it seems to make justification impossible. For if there is an infinite chain of reasons, each receiving its justification from its neighbour, then there is no justification to inherit in the first place. Some have argued that the objection arises from misunderstanding the character of justification. Justification is not something that one reason inherits from another; rather it gradually emerges from the chain as a whole. Nowhere however is it made clear what (...) exactly is meant by emergence. The aim of this paper is to fill that lacuna: we describe a detailed procedure for the emergence of justification that enables us to see exactly how justification surfaces from a chain of reasons. (shrink)

One possible aim of epistemology is to advise cognizers on the proper choice of beliefs or other doxastic attitudes. This aim has often been part of scientific methodology: to tell scientists when they should accept a given hypothesis, or give it a certain degree of credence. This regulative function is naturally linked to the notion of epistemic justification. It may well be suggested that a cognizer is justified in believing something just in case the rules of proper epistemic procedure prescribe (...) that belief. Principles that make such doxastic prescriptions might thereby "double" as principles of justification. In the first part of this paper I contrast the regulative conception of justification with another, equally tenable, conception. Then, after noting a fundamental worry about the applicability of the regulative conception, I proceed to lay it out in more detail. The regulative justificational status of a doxastic attitude for person S at time t depends upon (a) the right set of doxastic instructions and (b) the states S is in at (or just before) t. (shrink)

When one recalls that P, how is one justified in believing that P? I refute the three most natural answers to this question: a memory belief is not justified by a belief in the reliability of memory; a memory experience does not provide a new, foundational justification for a belief; and memory does not merely preserve the same justification a belief had when first adopted. Instead, the justification of a memory belief is a product of both the initial justification for (...) adopting it and the justification for retaining it provided by seeming memories. (shrink)

Look before you leap. - Proverb. He who hesitates is lost. - Another proverb.