The problem of skepticism is often understood as a paradox: a valid argument with plausible premises whose conclusion is that we lack justification for perceptual beliefs. Typically, this conclusion is deemed unacceptable, so a theory is offered that posits conditions for justification on which some premise is false. The theory defended here is more general, and explains why the paradox arises in the first place. Like Strawson’s (Introduction to logical theory, Wiley, New York, 1952) “ordinary language” approach to (...) induction, the theory posits something built into the very notion of justification: it is loaded with a bias towards the proposition that we are not massively deceived. Beyond the paradox, remaining skeptical problems consist of metaphysical and practical questions: whether we are massively deceived, or why we should use our loaded notion rather than some other. Such challenges have pro- found epistemological significance, but they are not problems that an a priori theory of justification can solve. (shrink)

According to the standard view, a belief is based on a reason and doxastically justified—i.e., permissibly held—only if a causal relation obtains between a reason and the belief. In this paper, I argue that a belief can be doxastically justified by a reason’s mere disposition to sustain it. Such a disposition, however, wouldn’t establish a causal connection unless it were manifested. My argument is that, in the cases I have in mind, the manifestation of this disposition would add no positive (...) epistemic feature to the belief: a belief that is justified after the manifestation of a reason’s causal powers must have already been justified before their manifestation. As a result, those who adhere to the standard causal view of the basing relation face a hard choice: they should either abandon the enormously popular view that doxastic justification has a basing requirement or modify their view of the basing relation. (shrink)

Ever since Plato it has been thought that one knows only if one's belief hits the mark of truth and does so with adequate justification. The issues debated by Laurence BonJour and Ernest Sosa concern mostly the nature and conditions of such epistemic justification, and its place in our understanding of human knowledge. Presents central issues pertaining to internalism vs. externalism and foundationalism vs. virtue epistemology in the form of a philosophical debate. Introduces students to fundamental questions within (...) epistemology while engaging in contemporary debates. Written by two of today’s foremost epistemologists. Includes an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

Theories of emotional justification investigate the conditions under which emotions are epistemically justified or unjustified. I make three contributions to this research program. First, I show that we can generalize some familiar epistemological concepts and distinctions to emotional experiences. Second, I use these concepts and distinctions to display the limits of the ‘simple view’ of emotional justification. On this approach, the justification of emotions stems only from the contents of the mental states they are based on, also (...) known as their cognitive bases. The simple view faces the ‘gap problem’: If cognitive bases and emotions (re)present their objects and properties in different ways, then cognitive bases are not sufficient to justify emotions. Third, I offer a novel solution to the gap problem based on emotional dispositions. This solution (1) draws a line between the justification of basic and non-basic emotions, (2) preserves a broadly cognitivist view of emotions, (3) avoids a form of value skepticism that threatens inferentialist views of emotional justification, and (4) sheds new light on the structure of our epistemic access to evaluative properties. (shrink)

There is much to like about the idea that justification should be understood in terms of normality or normic support (Smith 2016, Goodman and Salow 2018). The view does a nice job explaining why we should think that lottery beliefs differ in justificatory status from mundane perceptual or testimonial beliefs. And it seems to do that in a way that is friendly to a broadly internalist approach to justification. In spite of its attractions, we think that the normic (...) support view faces two serious challenges. The first is that it delivers the wrong result in preface cases. These cases suggest that the view is either too sceptical or too externalist. The second is that the view struggles with certain kinds of Moorean absurdities. It turns out that these problems can easily be avoided. If we think of normality as a condition on *knowledge*, we can characterise justification in terms of its connection to knowledge and thereby avoid the difficulties discussed here. The resulting view does an equally good job explaining why we should think that our perceptual and testimonial beliefs are justified when lottery beliefs cannot be. Thus, it seems that little could be lost and much could be gained by revising the proposal and adopting a view on which it is knowledge, not justification, that depends directly upon normality. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here (...) is to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

Sven Rosenkranz’s Justification as Ignorance shows how a strongly internalist conception of justification can be derived from a strongly externalist conception of knowledge, given an identification of justification with second-order ignorance and a set of structural principles concerning knowing and being in a position to know. Among these principles is an epistemic analogue of the Geach modal schema which states that one is always in a position to know that one doesn’t know p or in a position (...) to know that one doesn’t know not-p. Even suitably refined, the principle faces a range of counterexamples in which it misleadingly and persistently seems to one that one knows whether p without it seeming to one that one knows p nor that one knows not-p. These cases also threaten the book’s case for the luminosity of second-order ignorance, which is in turn central to its derivation of strongly internalist principles of justification. (shrink)

Adequate epistemic justification is best conceived as the appearance, over time, of knowledge to the subject. ‘Appearance’ is intended literally, not as a synonym for belief. It is argued through consideration of examples that this account gets the extension of ‘adequately justified belief’ at least roughly correct. A more theoretical reason is then offered to regard justification as the appearance of knowledge: If we have a knowledge norm for assertion, we do our best to comply with this norm (...) when we express as assertions only beliefs that appear to us to be knowledge. If we are doing our best, there is little point in further sanctions. So a norm of knowledge for assertion would lead to a secondary norm of justified belief as the appearance of knowledge, marking a point at which our assertions may be corrected but should not be blamed. (shrink)

An influential proposal is that knowledge involves safe belief. A belief is safe, in the relevant sense, just in case it is true in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper, I introduce a distinct but complementary notion of safety, understood in terms of epistemically possible worlds. The main aim, in doing so, is to add to the epistemologist’s tool-kit. To demonstrate the usefulness of the tool, I use it to advance and assess substantive proposals concerning knowledge and justification.

Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability constitutes, or contributes to, validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what bar for authoritativeness such justification may employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that a bar for authoritativeness, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the degree of discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S accords to people when (...) it builds ψ. I argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low discursive purchase, while high degrees of purchase require low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic conceptions of justification that prioritize ends that commit to high idealization values, and recognitive conceptions that favour high discursive purchase. On this basis, I argue for a moderately recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ low enough so that it is a genuine option for actual people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. (shrink)

This chapter is guided by the hypothesis that the point and purpose of using the concept of justification in epistemic evaluation is tied to its role in the practice of critical reflection. In section one, I propose an analysis of justification as the epistemic property in virtue of which a belief has the potential to survive ideal critical reflection. In section two, I use this analysis in arguing for a form of access internalism on which one has (...) class='Hi'>justification to believe a proposition if and only if one has higher-order justification to believe that one has justification to believe that proposition. In section three, I distinguish between propositional and doxastic versions of access internalism and argue that the propositional version avoids familiar objections to the doxastic version. In section four, I argue that the propositional version of access internalism also explains and vindicates internalist intuitions about cases. In section five, I conclude with some reflections on the relationship between critical reflection, responsibility and personhood. (shrink)

Justification has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that deny the necessity of justification have been dismissed as nonstarters. In this chapter, we challenge this long-standing view by showing that many of the arguments offered in support of it fall short and by providing empirical evidence that individuals are often willing to attribute knowledge when epistemic justification is lacking.

A distinctive position in contemporary political philosophy is occupied by those who defend the principle of public justification. This principle states that the moral or political rules that govern our common life must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. In this article, I evaluate Gerald Gaus’s defence of this principle, which holds that it is presupposed by our moral reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. He argues, echoing P.F. Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, that these attitudes (...) are so deep a part of us that we are unable to rationally reject them. I examine and reject this defence of the principle. Considering the nature of our commitment to the moral reactive attitudes, I argue that those attitudes need not be grounded in a commitment to public justification. The availability of alternative grounds for these attitudes shows, contra Gaus, that we can rationally reject the principle of public justification while maintaining a wholehearted commitment to the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating one’s beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To (...) avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on one’s experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems. (shrink)

The paper challenges the view that public justification sits well with emancipatory and egalitarian intuitions. I distinguish between the depth, scope and the purchase of the discursive standing that such justification allocates, and situate within this matrix Rawls’s view of public justification. A standard objection to this view is that public justification should be more inclusive in scope. This is both plausible and problematic in emancipatory and egalitarian terms. If inclusive public justification allocates discursive standing (...) that is rich in purchase, as seems desirable in emancipatory terms, it may be unable to allocate equal standing to all relevant people. And if it is to allocate equal standing, then the equality of that standing should be construed in terms that allow for unequal discursive purchase. (shrink)

In his influential book, The Nature of Morality, Gilbert Harman writes: “In explaining the observations that support a physical theory, scientists typically appeal to mathematical principles. On the other hand, one never seems to need to appeal in this way to moral principles.” What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast, if genuine? This chapter argues that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused what the chapter calls the justificatory challenge for realism about an area, D—the (...) challenge to justify our D-beliefs—with the reliability challenge for D-realism—the challenge to explain the reliability of our D-beliefs. Harman’s contrast is relevant to the first, but not, evidently, to the second. One upshot of the discussion is that genealogical debunking arguments are fallacious. Another is that indispensability considerations cannot answer the Benacerraf–Field challenge for mathematical realism. (shrink)

My focus will be on two questions about Moore’s justification to believe the premises and the conclusion of the argument above. At stake is what makes it possible for our experiences to justify our beliefs, and what makes it possible for us to be justified in disbelieving skeptical..

According to political liberalism, laws must be justified to all citizens in order to be legitimate. Most political liberals have taken this to mean that laws must be justified by appeal to a specific class of ‘public reasons’, which all citizens can accept. In this paper I defend an alternative, convergence, model of public justification, according to which laws can be justified to different citizens by different reasons, including reasons grounded in their comprehensive doctrines. I consider three objections to (...) such an account—that it undermines sincerity in public reason, that it underestimates the importance of shared values, and that it is insufficiently deliberative—and argue that convergence justifications are resilient to these objections. They should therefore be included within a theory of political liberalism, as a legitimate form of public justification. This has important implications for the obligations that political liberalism places upon citizens in their public deliberations and reason-giving, and might make the theory more attractive to some of its critics, particularly those sympathetic to religious belief. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer two counterexamples to the so-called ‘Uniqueness Thesis.’ As one of these examples rely on the thesis that it is possible for a justified belief to be based on an inconsistent body of evidence, I also offer reasons for this further thesis. On the assumption that doxastic justification entails propositional justification, the counterexamples seem to work.

According to deontological approaches to justification, we can analyze justification in deontic terms. In this paper, I try to advance the discussion of deontological approaches by applying recent insights in the semantics of deontic modals. Specifically, I use the distinction between weak necessity modals and strong necessity modals to make progress on a question that has received surprisingly little discussion in the literature, namely: ‘What’s the best version of a deontological approach?’ The two most obvious hypotheses are the (...) Permissive View, according to which justified expresses permission, and the Obligatory View, according to which justified expresses some species of obligation. I raise difficulties for both of these hypotheses. In light of these difficulties, I propose a new position, according to which justified expresses a property I call faultlessness, defined as the dual of weak necessity modals. According to this view, an agent is justified in phi-ing iff it’s not the case that she should [/ought] not phi. I argue that this ‘Faultlessness View’ gives us precisely what’s needed to avoid the problems facing the Permissive and Obligatory Views. (shrink)

Some bioethicists argue that conscientious objectors in health care should have to justify themselves, just as objectors in the military do. They should have to provide reasons that explain why they should be exempt from offering the services that they find offensive. There are two versions of this view in the literature, each giving different standards of justification. We show these views are each either too permissive (i.e. would result in problematic exemptions based on conscience) or too restrictive (i.e. (...) would produce problematic denials of exemption). We then develop a middle ground position that we believe better combines respect for the conscience of healthcare professionals with concern for the duties that they owe to patients. Our claim, in short, is that insofar as objectors should have to justify themselves, they should have to do it according to the standard that we defend rather than according to the standards that others have developed. (shrink)

According to a captivating picture, epistemic justification is essentially a matter of epistemic or evidential likelihood. While certain problems for this view are well known, it is motivated by a very natural thought—if justification can fall short of epistemic certainty, then what else could it possibly be? In this paper I shall develop an alternative way of thinking about epistemic justification. On this conception, the difference between justification and likelihood turns out to be akin to the (...) more widely recognised difference between ceteris paribus laws and brute statistical generalisations. I go on to discuss, in light of this suggestion, issues such as classical and lottery-driven scepticism as well as the lottery and preface paradoxes. (shrink)

This paper critically examines currently influential transparency accounts of our knowledge of our own beliefs that say that self-ascriptions of belief typically are arrived at by “looking outward” onto the world. For example, one version of the transparency account says that one self-ascribes beliefs via an inference from a premise to the conclusion that one believes that premise. This rule of inference reliably yields accurate self-ascriptions because you cannot infer a conclusion from a premise without believing the premise, and so (...) you cannot infer from a premise that you believe the premise unless you do believe it. I argue that this procedure cannot be a source of justification, however, because one can be justified in inferring from p that q only if p amounts to strong evidence that q is true. This is incompatible with the transparency account because p often is not very strong evidence that you believe that p. For example, unless you are a weather expert, the fact that it will rain is not very strong evidence that you believe it will rain. After showing how this intuitive problem can be made precise, I conclude with a broader lesson about the nature of inferential justification: that beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by beliefs, when justified, must be underwritten by evidential relationships between the facts or propositions which those beliefs represent. (shrink)

Preservationism is a dominant account of the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of memory. According to preservationism, a memory belief is justified only if that belief was justified when it was initially held. However, we now know that much of what we remember is not explicitly stored, but instead reconstructed when we attempt to recall it. Since reconstructive memory beliefs may not have been continuously held by the agent, or never held before at all, a purely preservationist (...) account of memory does not allow for justified reconstructed memory beliefs. In this essay, I show how a process reliabilist account can maintain preservationism about reproductive memory beliefs while accommodating the justification of reconstructive memory beliefs. I argue that reconstructive memory is an inferential process, and that therefore the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. Accordingly, my process reliabilist account combines a preservationist account of reproductive memory with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I end by defending this view against objections. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest among epistemologists in the nature of understanding, with some authors arguing that understanding should replace knowledge as the primary focus of epistemology. But what is understanding? According to what is often called the standard view, understanding is a species of knowledge. Although this view has recently been challenged in various ways, even the critics of the standard view have assumed that understanding requires justification and belief. I argue that it (...) requires neither. If sound, these arguments have important upshots not only for the nature of understanding, but also for its distinctive epistemic value and its role in contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it (...) occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

This volume considers forms of information manipulation and restriction in contemporary society. It explores whether and when manipulation of the conditions of inquiry without the consent of those manipulated is morally or epistemically justified. The contributors provide a wealth of examples of manipulation, and debate whether epistemic paternalism is distinct from other forms of paternalism debated in political theory. Special attention is given to medical practice, science communication, and research in science, technology, and society. Some of the contributors argue that (...) unconsenting interference with or "conceptual engineering" of people’s beliefs and ability of inquire is consistent with, and others that it is inconsistent with, efforts to democratize knowledge and decision-making. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it's possible that the contents of some visual experiences are influenced by the subject's prior beliefs, hopes, suspicions, desires, fears or other mental states, and that this possibility places constraints on the theory of perceptual justification that 'dogmatism' or 'phenomenal conservativism' cannot respect.

Justification logics are constructive analogues of modal logics. They are often used as epistemic logics, particularly as models of evidentialist justification. However, in this role, justification logics are defective insofar as they represent justification with a necessity-like operator, whereas actual evidentialist justification is usually probabilistic. This paper first examines and rejects extant candidates for solving this problem: Milnikel’s Logic of Uncertain Justifications, Ghari’s Hájek–Pavelka-Style Justification Logics and a version of probabilistic justification logic developed (...) by Kokkinis et al. It then proposes a new solution to the problem in the form of a justification logic that incorporates the essential features of both a fuzzy logic and a probabilistic logic. (shrink)

Does epistemic justification aim at truth? The vast majority of epistemologists instinctively answer 'Yes'; it's the textbook response. Joseph Cruz and John Pollock surprisingly say no. In 'The Chimerical Appeal of Epistemic Externalism' they argue that justification bears no interesting connection to truth; justification does not even aim at truth. 'Truth is not a very interesting part of our best understanding' of justification (C&P 2004, 137); it has no 'connection to the truth.' A 'truth-aimed ... epistemology (...) is not entitled to carry the day' (C&P 2004, 138, emphasis added).Pollock and Cruz's argument for this surprising conclusion is of general interest for it is 'out of step with a very common view on the .. (shrink)

The paper critically examines recent work on justifications and excuses in epistemology. I start with a discussion of Gerken’s claim that the “excuse maneuver” is ad hoc. Recent work from Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn provides resources to advance the debate. Focusing in particular on a key insight in Williamson’s view, I then consider an additional worry for the so-called excuse maneuver. I call it the “excuses are not enough” objection. Dealing with this objection generates pressure in two directions: one (...) is to show that excuses are a positive enough normative standing to help certain externalists with important cases; the other is to do so in a way that does not lead back to Gerken’s objection. I show how a Williamson-inspired framework is flexible enough to deal with both sources of pressure. Perhaps surprisingly, I draw on recent virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Say that two goals are normatively coincident just in case one cannot aim for one goal without automatically aiming for the other. While knowledge and justification are distinct epistemic goals, with distinct achievement conditions, this paper begins from the suggestion that they are nevertheless normatively coincident—aiming for knowledge and aiming for justification are one and the same activity. A number of surprising consequences follow from this—both specific consequences about how we can ascribe knowledge and justification in lottery (...) cases and more general consequences about the nature of justification and the relationship between justification and evidential probability. Many of these consequences turn out to be at variance with conventional, prevailing views. (shrink)

Normative explanations of why things are wrong, good, or unfair are ubiquitous in ordinary practice and normative theory. This paper argues that normative explanation is subject to a justification condition: a correct complete explanation of why a normative fact holds must identify features that would go at least some way towards justifying certain actions or attitudes. I first explain and motivate the condition I propose. I then support it by arguing that it fits well with various theories of normative (...) reasons, makes good sense of certain legitimate moves in ordinary normative explanatory discourse, and helps to make sense of our judgments about explanatory priority in certain cases of normative explanation. This last argument also helps to highlight respects in which normative explanation won’t be worryingly discontinuous with explanations in other domains even though these other explanations aren’t subject to the justification condition. Thus the paper aims not only to do some constructive theorizing about the relatively neglected topic of normative explanation but also to cast light on the broader question of how normative explanation may be similar to and different from explanations in other domains. (shrink)

Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have recently argued that the evidential support relation should be understood in terms of explanatory coherence: roughly, one's evidence supports a proposition if and only if that proposition is part of the best available explanation of the evidence. Their thesis has been criticized through alleged counterexamples, perhaps the most important of which are cases where a subject has a justified belief about the future. Kevin McCain has defended the thesis against Byerly's counterexample. I argue that (...) McCain's defense is inadequate before pointing toward a more promising solution for explanationism. The Byerly–McCain exchange is important because it casts light on the difficult issues of the standards for justification and the nature of epistemic support. Furthermore, McCain's defense of explanationism about epistemic support represents an important recent development of the burgeoning explanationist program in epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Sometimes one can prevent harm only by contravening rights. If the harm one can prevent is great enough, compared to the stringency of the opposing rights, then one has a lesser-evil justification to contravene the rights. Non-consequentialist orthodoxy holds that, most of the time, lesser-evil justifications add to agents’ permissible options without taking any away. Helen Frowe rejects this view. She claims that, almost always, agents must act on their lesser-evil justifications. Our primary task is to refute Frowe’s flagship (...) argument. Secondarily, it is to sketch a positive case for nonconsequentialist orthodoxy. (shrink)

In Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge, Jessica Brown identifies a number of problems for the so-called knowledge view of justification. According to this view, we cannot justifiably believe what we do not know. Most epistemologists reject this view on the grounds that false beliefs can be justified if, say, supported by the evidence or produced by reliable processes. We think this is a mistake and that many epistemologists are classifying beliefs as justified because they have properties that indicate that something (...) should be excused. Brown thinks that previous attempts to make this case have been unsuccessful. While the difficulties Brown points to are genuine, I think they show that attempts to explain a classificatory judgment haven't been successful. Still, I would argue that the classification is correct. We need a better explanation of this classificatory judgment. I will try to clarify the justification-excuse distinction and explain why it's a mistake to insist that beliefs that violate epistemic norms might be justified. Just as it's possible for a rational agent to act without justification in spite of her best intentions, it's possible that a rational thinker who follows the evidence and meets our expectations might nevertheless believe without sufficient justification. If our justified beliefs are supposed to guide us in deciding what to do, we probably should draw on discussions from morality and the law about the justification/excuse distinction to inform our understanding of the epistemic case. (shrink)

People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have (...) these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory. (shrink)

According to the bootstrapping problem, any view that allows for basic knowledge (knowledge obtained from a reliable source prior to one’s knowing that that source is reliable) is forced to accept that one can utilize a track-record argument to acquire justification for believing that one’s belief source is reliable; yet, we tend to think that acquiring justification in this way is too easy. In this paper I argue, first, that those who respond to the bootstrapping problem by denying (...) basic knowledge succumb to over-intellectualizing epistemology, and secondly, reliabilist views avoid over-intellectualization only at the expense of sanctioning bootstrapping as a benign procedure. Both of these outcomes are difficult to bear. To ward off each of these unsavory outcomes, I propose an alternative solution that draws on a distinction between two separate epistemic concepts: entitlement and justification. (shrink)

An essay on Kant's theory of justification, where by “justification” is meant the evaluative concept that specifies conditions under which a propositional attitude is rationally acceptable with a moderate-to-high degree of confidence. Kant employs both epistemic and non-epistemic concepts of justification: an epistemic concept of justification sets out conditions under which a propositional attitude is rationally acceptable with a moderate-to-high degree of confidence and a candidate (if true and Gettier-immune) for knowledge. A non-epistemic concept of (...) class='Hi'>justification, by contrast, sets out conditions under which attitudes are rationally acceptable with a moderate-to-high degree of confidence but not candidates for knowledge (even if true). The latter conditions will typically be “pragmatic” or “practical,” and thus license acceptance from a “practical” point of view. For Kant, only broadly-speaking practical reasons can provide adequate motivation for adopting a positive attitude towards a proposition (rather than suspending judgment) in the absence of sufficient epistemic grounds. -/- . (shrink)

A central tenet of medical ethics holds that it is permissible to perform a medical intervention on a competent individual only if that individual has given informed consent to the intervention. However, in some circumstances it is tempting to say that the moral reason to obtain informed consent prior to administering a medical intervention is outweighed. For example, if an individual’s refusal to undergo a medical intervention would lead to the transmission of a dangerous infectious disease to other members of (...) the community, one might claim that it would be morally permissible to administer the intervention even in the absence of consent. Indeed, as we shall discuss below, there are a number of examples of public health authorities implementing compulsory or coercive measures for the purposes of infectious disease control (IDC). The plausibility of the thought that non-consensual medical interventions might be justified when performed for the purpose of IDC raises the question of whether such interventions might permissibly be used to realize other public goods. In this article we focus on one possibility: whether it could be permissible to non-consensually impose certain interventions that alter brain states or processes through chemical or physical means on serious criminal offenders. We shall suggest that some such interventions might be permissible if they safely and effectively serve to facilitate the offender’s rehabilitation and thereby prevent criminal recidivism. (shrink)

I argue that justification isn't just in the head. The argument is simple. We should be guided by our beliefs. We shouldn't be guided by anything to do what we shouldn't do. So, we shouldn't believe in ways that would guide us to do the things that we shouldn't. Among the various things we should do is discharge our duties (e.g., to fulfil our promissory obligations) and respect the rights of others (e.g., rights not to be harmed or killed (...) by agents acting on bad information). The grounds of our duties and obligations aren't just in the head. Thus, the conditions that bear on the justification of our beliefs cannot be contained wholly in our heads. The internalist might be right about aspects of normativity, but their theories tell us important normative truths without telling us the whole truth. In addition to norms that tell us how to process information, there are norms that tell us how we ought to live together. In information-asymmetry cases, these norms clearly come apart. Important normative questions about what we should do when agents (who, we might suppose, do what they subjectively ought to do) have interests that come into conflict can only be answered by externalist theories that recognise information-transcendent norms and normatively significant relations that don't supervene upon the information of any agent in particular. The internalist picture turns out to be disturbing precisely because it falls silent when we're faced with questions about how to resolve these conflicts. Resolving these conflicts should be a pressing concern for every normative theory. (shrink)

I would like to assume that Reichenbach's distinction of Justification and Discovery lives on, and to seek arguments in his texts that would justify their relevance in this field. The persuasive force of these arguments transcends the contingent circumstances apart from which their genesis and local transmission cannot be made understandable. I shall begin by characterizing the context distinction as employed by Reichenbach in "Experience and Prediction" to differentiate between epistemology and science (1). Following Thomas Nickles and Kevin T. (...) Kelly, one can distinguish two meanings of the context distinction in Reichenbach's work. One meaning, which is primarily to be found in the earlier writings, conceives of scientific discoveries as potential objects of epistemological justification. The other meaning, typical for the later writings, removes scientific discoveries from the possible domain of epistemology. The genesis of both meanings, which demonstrates the complexity of the relationships obtaining between epistemology and science, can be made understandable by appealing to the historical context (2). Both meanings present Reichenbach with the task of establishing the autonomy of epistemology through the justification of induction. Finally, I shall expound this justification and address some of its elements of rationality characterizing philosophy of science(3). (shrink)

In virtue of what are we justified in employing the rule of inference Modus Ponens? One tempting approach to answering this question is to claim that we are justified in employing Modus Ponens purely in virtue of facts concerning meaning or concept-possession. In this paper, we argue that such meaning-based accounts cannot be accepted as the fundamental account of our justification.

The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire (...) attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis. (shrink)

Analytic epistemologists agree that, whatever else is true of epistemic justification, it is distinct from knowledge. However, if recent work by Jonathan Sutton is correct, this view is deeply mistaken, for according to Sutton justification is knowledge. That is, a subject is justified in believing that p iff he knows that p. Sutton further claims that there is no concept of epistemic justification distinct from knowledge. Since knowledge is factive, a consequence of Sutton’s view is that there (...) are no false justified beliefs. <br> Following Sutton, I will begin by outlining kinds of beliefs that do not constitute knowledge but that seem to be justified. I will then be in a position to critically evaluate Sutton’s arguments for his position that justification is knowledge, concluding that he fails to establish his bold thesis. In the course of so doing, I will defend the following rule of assertion: (The JBK-rule) One must: assert p only if one has justification to believe that one knows that p.<br>. (shrink)

This paper advances our understanding of the norms of assertion in two ways. First, I evaluate recent studies claiming to discredit an important earlier finding which supports the hypothesis that assertion has a factive norm. In particular, I evaluate whether it was due to stimuli mentioning that a speaker’s evidence was fallible. Second, I evaluate the hypothesis that assertion has a truth-insensitive standard of justification. In particular, I evaluate the claim that switching an assertion from true to false, while (...) holding all else objectively constant, is irrelevant to attributions of justification. Two pre-registered experiments provide decisive evidence against each claim. In the first experiment, switching from mentioning to not mentioning fallibility made no difference to assertability attributions, thereby disproving the criticism concerning fallibility. By contrast, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of assertability attribution from over 90% to less than 20%, thereby replicating and vindicating the original finding supporting a factive norm. In the second experiment, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of justification attribution from over 80 to 10%, thereby undermining the hypothesis that assertion’s standard of justification is truth-insensitive. The second experiment also demonstrates that perspective-taking influences attributions of justification, and it provides initial evidence that the standard of justification for assertion is stricter than the standard for belief. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to believe P (= propositional justification) versus having a justified belief in P (= doxastic justification). The focus of this paper is on doxastic justification and on what conditions are necessary for having it. In particular, I challenge the basing demand on doxastic justification, i.e., the idea that one can have a doxastically justified belief only if one’s belief is based on (...) an epistemically appropriate reason. This demand has been used to refute versions of coherentism and conservatism about perceptual justification as well as to defend phenomenal “conservatism” and other views besides. In what follows I argue that there is virtually no reason to think there is a basing demand on doxastic justification. I also argue that even if the basing demand were true, it would still fail to serve the dialectical purposes for which it has been employed in arguments concerning coherentism, conservatism, and phenomenal “conservatism”. I conclude by discussing the fact that knowledge has a basing demand and show why this needn’t raise the same sort of problems for coherentism and conservatism that doxastic justification’s basing demand seemed to. (shrink)

According to some prominent accounts of scientific progress, e.g. Bird’s epistemic account, accepting new theories is progressive only if the theories are justified in the sense required for knowledge. This paper argues that epistemic justification requirements of this sort should be rejected because they misclassify many paradigmatic instances of scientific progress as non-progressive. In particular, scientific progress would be implausibly rare in cases where (a) scientists are aware that most or all previous theories in some domain have turned out (...) to be false, (b) the new theory was a result of subsuming and/or logically strengthening previous theories, or (c) scientists are aware of significant peer disagreement about which theory is correct. (shrink)