DEMONS AND THE ISOLATION ARGUMENT

Justifying a belief gives reason to think that the belief is true. So our concept of justification contains a 'truth connection'. I canvass a number of proposals for analysing this. In the end, two competing conceptions of the truth connection remain: the first, that justifying a belief makes the belief objectively probable, the second, that justifying a belief makes the belief probable in a world which would make true our other beliefs. I discuss reasons for embracing and rejecting these two versions of the truth connection. Ultimately, the two versions appear to represent distinct but equally plausible conceptions of justification. I conclude by rejecting the proposal that these truth connections respectively capture internalist and externalist conceptions of justification.     

Is knowledge justified true belief?

Is knowledge justified true belief? Most philosophers believe that the answer is clearly ‘no’, as demonstrated by Gettier cases. But Gettier cases don’t obviously refute the traditional view that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). There are ways of resisting Gettier cases, at least one of which is partly successful. Nevertheless, when properly understood, Gettier cases point to a flaw in JTB, though it takes some work to appreciate just what it is. The nature of the flaw helps us better understand the nature of knowledge and epistemic justification. I propose a crucial improvement to the traditional view, relying on an intuitive and independently plausible metaphysical distinction pertaining to the manifestation of intellectual powers, which supplements the traditional components of justification, truth and belief.     

Why Reid was no dogmatist

According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a (defeasible) source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something like dogmatism is true, it is a mere contingent truth, discernible a posteriori. Owing to Reid’s epistemological naturalism, it might have been false that a perceptual experience is, by itself, a source of justification. On account of regarding something like dogmatism as only contingently true, then, Reid accepts the demand for a meta-justification of a sort that dogmatists squarely reject, and purports to meet it. Given that dogmatism essentially involves the rejection of the demand to meet this kind of meta-justification, it would seem that Reid should not be construed as endorsing dogmatism at all. I close by briefly considering how Reid’s view fits amongst dogmatism’s competitors.

     

Epistemic Value and the New Evil Demon

In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief.     

HOW TO DEFEAT BELIEF IN THE EXTERNAL WORLD

Abstract:  I defend the view that there is a privileged class of propositions – that there is an external world, among other such 'hinge propositions'– that possess a special epistemic status: justified belief in these propositions is not defeated unless one has sufficient reason to believe their negation. Two arguments are given for this conclusion. Finally, three proposals are offered as morals of the preceding story: first, our justification for hinge propositions must be understood as defeatable, second, antiskeptics must explain our knowledge in the face of 'actual world' skepticism (like dreaming skepticism) as much as in the face of the usual sort (like brain-in-vat skepticism), and, finally, our justification for hinge propositions is basic (i.e. non-inferential).     

Generalising the probabilistic semantics of conditionals

Conclusion If assertibility rules are to be important in semantic theory, hypotheses such as this one will need to beiinvestigated. And Slote's observation (see note 12) that what matters for assertibility is not belief but knowledge will turn out to have powerful consequences.Adams' rule is the first well understood assertibility rule in philosophical semantics. I think we should be led by its successes to look for more. In this paper, I have built on his assertibility rule and offered two more. But it is worth observing, finally, that their interest lies, in part, in the contrast with semantic rules stated in terms of truth conditions. Much recent discussion of assertibility conditions derives from Dummett's anti-realist claim that we should perhaps substitute assertibility conditions for truth conditions in general; see Dummett (1973), Wright (1976). This notion of assertibility is not the one I have been working with here: for the anti-realist notion of an assertibility condition is of a condition whose obtaining provides epistemic warrant for the sentence asserted. Dummett and Wright's assertibility conditions are thus to do with the justification of the belief expressed by a sentence and not directly with the justification for asserting it. ¹⁷ But realists may be interested in a more modest role for assertibility conditions — in my sense — which are not derived, by way of ASS, from truth conditions. Realism need not be the claim that all declarative sentences can be given truth conditions; it requires only the view that truth conditions account for the central class of cases. The proposals in this paper presuppose a realist treatment of the antecedents and consequents of unembedded conditionals, and a realist view of the sentences within the scope of the epistemic modality. What could be more central than that?I am very grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal and to its editor for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Epistemically self-defeating arguments and skepticism about intuition

An argument is epistemically self-defeating when either the truth of an argument’s conclusion or belief in an argument’s conclusion defeats one’s justification to believe at least one of that argument’s premises. Some extant defenses of the evidentiary value of intuition have invoked considerations of epistemic self-defeat in their defense. I argue that there is one kind of argument against intuition, an unreliability argument, which, even if epistemically self-defeating, can still imply that we are not justified in thinking intuition has evidentiary value.     

Accidental Truth and Accidental Justification

The presence of accidentality in a subject's holding a belief is generally thought to be incompatible with that belief7apos;s being an instance of know-ledge. Epistemologists have tended to focus on the accidentality of the truth of a belief. I argue (a) that it is also possible that there be accidentality in the justification of a belief, and (b) that the consequences of this type of accidentality are potentially much more harmful than accidentality only in the truth of a belief.     

The Trouble with Infinitism

One way to solve the epistemic regress problem would be to show that we can acquire justification by means of an infinite regress. This is infinitism. This view has not been popular, but Peter Klein has developed a sophisticated version of infinitism according to which all justified beliefs depend upon an infinite regress of reasons. Klein's argument for infinitism is unpersuasive, but he successfully responds to the most compelling extant objections to the view. A key component of his position is his claim that an infinite regress is necessary, but not sufficient, for justified belief. This enables infinitism to avoid a number of otherwise compelling objections. However, it commits infinitism to the existence of an additional feature of reasons that is necessary and, together with the regress condition, sufficient for justified belief. The trouble with infinitism is that any such condition could account for the connection between justification and truth only by undermining the rationale for the regress condition itself.     

Truth vs. Rorty

In his article 'Is Truth a Goal of Enquiry?' Rorty claims that the difference between truth and justification makes no difference to practice. His argument for this is that assessment of truth and assessment of justification are the same activity. This argument is insufficient, for the difference to practice can be found elsewhere. I shall demonstrate that, and also show in which way this difference manifests itself in utility/risk calculations in which the risk is that a certain justified belief might be false. Since decisions are often based upon such utility/risk calculations, and since these calculations presuppose the difference between truth and justification, the difference between truth and justification does make a difference to practice.     

Does Doxastic Justification Have a Basing Requirement?

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to believe that 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 I show why this needn't raise the same sort of problems for coherentism and conservatism that doxastic justification's basing demand seemed to raise.     

The Truth-Conduciveness Problem of Coherentism and a Sellarsian Explanatory Coherence Theory

According to the truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism, the coherence theory of justification can hardly show that coherentist justification is truth-conducive. This problem is generally conceived as the most recalcitrant problem with the coherence theory. The purpose of this paper is to show that it does not pose a serious problem for a certain version of coherentism, namely a Sellarsian explanatory coherence theory of justification combined with the deflationary theory of truth. On this version of coherentism, our epistemic goal is to gradually improve our conceptual framework so as to maximize its explanatory coherence, and there is no substantial norm of truth independent of the norms of justification, so that we cannot evaluate the truth-conduciveness of a belief independently of the norms of justification. I argue that this version of coherentism can cope with the truth-conduciveness problem.     

D. Z. Phillips and reasonable belief

As an illustration of what Phillips called the “heterogeneity of sense,” this essay concentrates on differences in what is meant by a “reason for belief.” Sometimes saying that a belief is reasonable simply commends the belief’s unquestioned acceptance as a part of what we understand as a sensible outlook. Here the standard picture of justifying truth claims on evidential grounds breaks down; and it also breaks down in cases of fundamental moral and religious disagreement, where the basic beliefs that we hold affect our conception of what counts as a reliable ground of judgment. Phillips accepts the resultant variations in our conceptions of rational judgment as a part of logic, just as Wittgenstein did. All objective means of determining the truth or falsity of an assertion presume some underlying conceptual agreement about what counts as good judgment. This means that the possibility of objective justification is limited. But no pernicious relativism results from this view, for as Wittgenstein said, “After reason comes persuasion.” There is, moreover, a non-objective criterion of sorts in the moral and religious requirement that one be able to live with one’s commitments. In such cases, good judgment is still possible, but it differs markedly from the standard model of making rational inferences.     

Retraction and testimonial justification: a new problem for the assurance view

The Assurance View, as advanced by Angus Ross and Richard Moran, makes the epistemology of testimony a matter of interpersonal commitments and entitlements. More specifically, I argue, their position is best understood as claiming that for someone’s belief to be testimonially justified is for some speaker to bear illocutionary responsibility for its truth (while background conditions are met). With this understanding in hand, I present a problem for the view that has so far escaped attention, a problem deriving from the wide freedom we have to retract our assertions. Retraction dissolves the illocutionary responsibilities that were set up by preceding speech acts; but in some circumstances the epistemic significance of a retraction is effectively nil. We can therefore construct cases in which the responsibilities undertaken in testimony have been canceled, while the justification for belief based on it remains in place—and that shouldn’t be possible, if the Assurance View has things right. I present one such case and press its implications.

     

Is Mere True Belief Knowledge?

Crispin Sartwell ingeniously defends the provocative thesis that mere true belief suffices for knowledge. In doing so, he challenges one of the most deeply entrenched epistemological tenets, namely that knowledge must be more than mere true belief. Particularly interesting is the way he defends his thesis by appealing to considerations adduced by such prominent epistemologists as William Alston, Laurence BonJour, Alvin Goldman and Paul Moser, each of whom denies that knowledge is merely true belief. In this paper, I argue that the case Sartwell presents for his thesis fails. However, by examining why it fails, we may derive at least four important epistemological lessons: (1) being justified does not entail being able to give a justification; (2) we should distinguish between epistemic justification conceived of as intrinsically conducive to truth and conceived of as extrinsically conducive to truth; (3) we should distinguish between epistemic justification conceived of as an essential criterion of knowledge and conceived of as an accidental criterion of knowledge; and (4) epistemologists need to specify how the telos of inquiry involves more than the acquisition of (merely) true beliefs.Socrates: Then tell me: what definition can we give with the least risk of contradicting ourselves?Theaetetus: The one we tried before, Socrates. I have nothing else to suggest.Socrates: What was that?Theaetetus: That true belief is knowledge. Surely there can at least be no mistake in believing what is true and the consequences are always satisfactory.Theaetetus 200d–e     

The virtues of epistemic conservatism

Although several important methodologies implicitly assume the truth of epistemic conservatism, the view that holding a belief confers some measure of justification on the belief, recent criticisms have led some to conclude that epistemic conservatism is an implausible view. That conclusion is mistaken. In this article, I propose a new formulation of epistemic conservatism that is not susceptible to the criticisms leveled at earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism. In addition to withstanding these criticisms, this formulation of epistemic conservatism has several benefits. First, this formulation has the benefits of earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, that is to say it makes sense of our intuitions about justification in regard to both memory beliefs and beliefs for which we have forgotten our evidence. Second, it provides a good way of responding to the skeptic’s challenge concerning the possibility of possessing knowledge of the external world posed by the Alternative Hypotheses argument. Third, it provides responses to both forms of a new skeptical problem plaguing basic knowledge structure theories, the Problem of Easy Knowledge formulated by Stewart Cohen. I argue that given the many benefits of this formulation of epistemic conservatism and the fact that it is not vulnerable to the criticisms that undermine earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, this formulation of epistemic conservatism is a plausible view to maintain.     

How misinformation taints our belief system: A focus on belief updating and relational reasoning

This commentary complements Stanley et al.'s (2022) target article by concentrating on the process of false belief construction and its associated cognitive mechanisms. It also concurs with the target article that a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which consumers revise their truth judgments in view of new evidence is needed. Specifically, this essay develops two main dimensions: the first about what we know from the actual construction of truth judgments; the second about what we know from the cognitive mechanisms by which truth judgments are constructed. Particularly on this second dimension, I develop the idea that relational reasoning is key to understanding how individuals integrate new information within their internal belief systems. These two dimensions are both process-minded, yet one is about how beliefs evolve over time, whereas the other is about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie belief construction. Overall, an understanding of these two elements is crucial to finding behavioral interventions that may curb the spread of misinformation.     

Belief-content justification for cases of a priori justification: A neo-Haackian model

I differentiate justification of the subject (S-justification) from justification of the content of a belief (C-justification) and note the questions associated with truth conduciveness of justification. I employ Susan Haack’s analysis of empirical justification and show how, with certain adaptations, it can account for justification from non-experiential sources, if there are any. I give at least one example from mathematical visual thinking.     

IS SCIENCE THE ONLY WAY TO TRUTH?

Abstract. In the context of contemporary life questions, especially that of world peace, this essay first develops the view that truth is essentially scientific truth. Although religion gives insights for living, as science encompasses more and more of human experience it reinforces and modifies religious truths with its own firm knowledge. However, because of several limitations, it is concluded that science alone cannot give a complete account of humanity and the universe. For our first beliefs and principles we must look to other kinds of truth, which are in accord with scientific truth but go beyond scientific method in their justification.     

Justification and Forgetting

This article sets forth a view about how epistemic justification figures in the ongoing justification of memory belief, a view that I call moderate justificational preservationism (MJP). MJP presupposes a nontraditional notion of memorial justification according to which what makes one's present belief that p prima facie justified is that which provided one with prima facie justification to believe that p originally (or some portion thereof). The article offers support for MJP by examining a series of cases that involve forgetting, and in doing so, criticizes views of Jennifer Lackey, David Owens, Michael Huemer, and George Pappas.