In “Theories of Justification,” Richard Fumerton begins an overview of several prominent positions on the nature of justification by isolating epistemic justification from nonepistemic justification. He also distinguishes between “having justification for a belief” and “having a justified belief,” arguing that the former is conceptually more fundamental. Fumerton then addresses the possibility that justification is a normative matter, suggesting that this possibility has little to offer as a concept of epistemic justification. He also critically examines more specific attempts to capture (...) the structure and content of epistemic justification. These include traditional foundationalism and variants thereof, externalist versions of foundationalism, contextualism, coherentism, and “mixed” theories which combine aspects of coherentism and foundationalism. (shrink)

Consisting of two essays, this work by a Harvard professor offers his thoughts on the idea of a social contract regulating people's behavior toward one another.

1 Knowledge and Justification This book is an investigation of one central problem which arises in the attempt to give a philosophical account of empirical ...

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In this incisive new book one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And (...) should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

El debate entre liberalismo y perfeccionismo ha sido uno de los ejes centrales de la Filosofía política durante los últimos veinte años. Este libro aspira a analizar críticamente y, en última instancia, a ofrecer una defensa del núcleo conceptual de la posicíon liberal. A lo largo del trabajo, se examina y discute una amplia serie de argumentos propuestos por filósofos contemporáneos "Rawls, Larmore, Barry, Kymlicka, Nagel y Ackerman, entre otros" en defensa de la neutralidad estatal. A su vez, se desarrollan (...) dos líneas de argumentacíon en defensa de las posiciones liberales que pretenden superar las falencias analizadas a lo largo del libro. La meta del primer argumento es demostrar que quien acepte las ideas fundamentales de la cultura política de las democracias contemporáneas deberá aceptar también las ideas básicas del liberalismo. Su punto de partida es una formulacíon del ideal ético-político de igual respeto por las personas y una reinterpretacíon y ampliacíon de lo que Rawls ha denominado las "cargas del juicio". El segundo argumento toma como punto de partida una idea arraigada en la tradicíon de pensamiento liberal: la necesidad de reconocer la falibilidad humana y sus consecuencias políticas y morales. El argumento combina la apelacíon a una premisa falibilista con una distincíon entre razones para afirmar una creencia y razones para estar justificado a actuar a partir de ella en contextos en los que cometer un error acarrearía un daño grave a terceros. Sobre esta base, se señala una serie de ventajas de las políticas que satisfacen los requisitos de justificacíon neutrales frente a las políticas perfeccionistas. (shrink)

The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. john rawls. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. david c. lamberth.