On the Relationship between Propositional and Doxastic Justification

I argue against the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification. The view under criticism is: if p is propositionally justified for S in virtue of S’s having reason(s) R, and S believes p on the basis of R, then S’s belief that p is doxastically justified. I then propose and evaluate alternative accounts of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, and conclude that we should explain propositional justification in terms of doxastic justification. If correct, this proposal would constitute a significant advance in our understanding of the sources of epistemic justification.     

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.     

Mentalist evidentialism vindicated (and a super-blooper epistemic design problem for proper function justification)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude (belief, or disbelief, or suspension of judgment) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections.     

All things considered duties to believe

To be a doxastic deontologist is to claim that there is such a thing as an ethics of belief (or of our doxastic attitudes in general). In other words, that we are subject to certain duties with respect to our doxastic attitudes, the non-compliance with which makes us blameworthy and that we should understand doxastic justification in terms of these duties. In this paper, I argue that these duties are our all things considered duties, and not our epistemic or moral duties, for example. I show how this has the surprising result that, if deontologism is a thesis about doxastic justification, it entails that there is no such thing as epistemic or moral justification for a belief that p. I then suggest why this result, though controversial, may have some salutary consequences: primarily that it helps us make some sense of an otherwise puzzling situation regarding doxastic dilemmas.     

Against Doxastic Compatibilism

William Alston has argued that the so‐called deontological conception of epistemic justification, on which epistemic justification is to be spelled out in terms of blame, responsibility, and obligations, is untenable. The basic idea of the argument is that this conception is untenable because we lack voluntary control over our beliefs and, therefore, cannot have any obligations to hold certain beliefs. If this is convincing, however, the argument threatens the very idea of doxastic responsibility. For, how can we ever be responsible for our beliefs if we lack control over them? Several philosophers have argued that the idea that we bear responsibility for our beliefs can be saved, because absence of voluntary control over our beliefs is perfectly compatible with having obligations to hold particular beliefs. With others, I call this view ‘doxastic compatibilism’. It comes in two varieties. On the first variety, doxastic obligations do not require any kind of doxastic control whatsoever. I argue that this variety of doxastic compatibilism fails because it confuses doxastic responsibility with other closely related phenomena. On the second variety, doxastic obligations do not require voluntary doxastic control, but only compatibilist doxastic control (roughly, reason‐responsiveness) and we do in fact have such control. I grant that we have such control, but also argue that having such control is insufficient for bearing doxastic responsibility. The plausibility of the examples put forward by doxastic compatibilists in support of the claim that it is sufficient for doxastic responsibility derives from the fact that in these examples, the subjects have control over factors that influence what they believe rather than control over those beliefs themselves.     

Positism: The Unexplored Solution to the Epistemic Regress Problem

As we trace a chain of reasoning backward, it must ultimately do one of four things: (i) end in an unjustified belief, (ii) continue infinitely, (iii) form a circle, or (iv) end in an immediately justified basic belief. This article defends positism—the view that, in certain circumstances, type‐(i) chains can justify us in holding their target beliefs. One of the assumptions that generates the epistemic regress problem is: (A) Person S is mediately justified in believing p iff (1) S has a doxastic reason q for p and (2) S is justified in believing q. Assumption (A) presupposes that reasoning is only justification transmitting, not justification generating. The article rejects (A) and argues that, in certain circumstances, reasoning itself is justification generating, even if that from which one is reasoning is not itself justified. It concludes by comparing positism with its infinitist, coherentist, and foundationalist rivals, acknowledging what is right about these other views.     

Australasian Journal of Philosophy Contents of Volume 88

Veritism says that the fundamental source of epistemic value for a doxastic state is the extent to which it represents the world correctly: that is, its fundamental epistemic value is determined entirely by its truth or falsity. The Swamping Problem says that Veritism is incompatible with two pre-theoretic beliefs about epistemic value: (I) a true justified belief is more (epistemically) valuable than a true unjustified belief; (II) a false justified belief is more (epistemically) valuable than a false unjustified belief. In this paper, I consider the Swamping Problem from the vantage-point of decision theory. I note that the central premise in the argument is what Stefánsson and Bradley call Chance Neutrality in Richard Jeffrey’s decision-theoretic framework. And I describe their argument that it should be rejected. Using this insight, I respond to the Swamping Problem on behalf of the veritist.     

Upping the Ex Ante Problem for Reliabilism

Process reliabilism is a theory about ex post justification, the justification of a doxastic attitude one has, such as belief. It says roughly that a justified belief is a belief formed by a reliable process. It is not a theory about ex ante justification, one's justification for having a particular attitude toward a proposition, an attitude one might lack. But many reliabilists supplement their theory such that it explains ex ante justification in terms of reliable processes. In this paper, I argue that the main way reliabilists supplement their theory fails. In the absence of an alternative, reliabilism does not account for ex ante justification.     

The Intertwinement of Propositional and Doxastic Justification

One important distinction in the debate over the nature of epistemic justification is the one between propositional and doxastic justification. Roughly, while doxastic justification is a property of beliefs, propositional justification is a property of propositions. On a rather common view, which accounts for doxastic justification in terms of propositional justification plus the so-called ‘basing relation’, propositional justification is seen as the prior notion, and doxastic justification is explained in terms of it. According to the opposing view, the direction of explanation needs to be reversed, and doxastic justification should be seen as primary. I distinguish between two notions of priority, and I argue that they give different verdicts with respect to the issue of which notion of justification comes first. The lesson may be taken to be that propositional and doxastic justification are in a relation of intertwinement.     

Intuition and The Junctures of Judgment in Decision Procedures for Clinical Ethics

Moral decision procedures such as principlism or casuistry require intuition at certain junctures, as when a principle seems indeterminate, or principles conflict, or we wonder which paradigm case is most relevantly similar to the instant case. However, intuitions are widely thought to lack epistemic justification, and many ethicists urge that such decision procedures dispense with intuition in favor of forms of reasoning that provide discursive justification. I argue that discursive justification does not eliminate or minimize the need for intuition, or constrain our intuitions. However, this is not a problem, for intuitions can be justified in easy or obvious cases, and decision procedures should be understood as heuristic devices for reaching judgments about harder cases that approximate the justified intuitions we would have about cases under ideal conditions, where hard cases become easy. Similarly, the forms of reasoning which provide discursive justification help decision procedures perform this heuristic function not by avoiding intuition, but by making such heuristics more accurate. Nonetheless, it is possible to demand too much justification; many clinical ethicists lack the time and philosophical training to reach the more elaborate levels of discursive justification. We should keep moral decision procedures simple and user-friendly so that they will provide what justification can be achieved under clinical conditions, rather than trying to maximize our epistemic justification out of an overstated concern about intuition.     

Believing on trust

The aim of the paper is to propose a way in which believing on trust can ground doxastic justification and knowledge. My focus will be the notion of trust that plays the role depicted by such cases as concerned Hardwig (J Philos 82:335–49, 1985; J Philos 88:693–708, 1991) in his early papers, papers that are often referenced in recent debates in social epistemology. My primary aim is not exegetical, but since it sometimes not so clear what Hardwig’s claims are, I offer some remarks of interpretation that might be of interest. The main purpose of the paper, however, is this: following various cues in Hardwig’s writing, I specify certain epistemic properties of agents in social systems, such that, roughly speaking, for agents to know (or be justified in believing) what the ‘system knows’, social relations of epistemic trust between agents in the system are necessary. I will suggest that we can view this social form of epistemic trust as non-inferential dispositions to believe what some individual or other source of information asserts or transmits. When this disposition is discriminating and defeater-sensitive, it can ground knowledge and justification. Or, more cautiously, we should be sympathetic to this view if we are inclined to accept the core insight of process reliabilism. Finally, I will offer some remarks about how epistemic trust and epistemic reasons may relate on this picture.     

Adaptability and Perspective

Ernest Sosa’s virtue perspectivism goes beyond standard reliabilism by requiring that agents with justified beliefs not only derive their beliefs from virtuous cognitive faculties but have an epistemic perspective that explains the origin of the beliefs and makes their belief-set coherent. I argue that Sosa’s account of the epistemic perspective does not ensure that the perspective will confer justification. An adequate epistemic perspective must establish a non-accidental connection between an agent’s use of a faculty in certain circumstances and its reliability in those circumstances. An agent who is capable of judging the reliability of her faculties in different situations will have a perspective that meets this requirement. Revising virtue perspectivism in this way also permits a stronger response to doxastic ascent arguments against the theory.     

Developmental Process Reliabilism: on Justification, Defeat, and Evidence

Here I present and defend an etiological theory of objective, doxastic justification, and related theories of defeat and evidence. The theory is intended to solve a problem for reliabilist epistemologies—the problem of identifying relevant environments for assessing a process’s reliability. It is also intended to go some way to accommodating, neutralizing, or explaining away many internalist-friendly elements in our epistemic thinking.     

Ampliative Transmission and Deontological Internalism

Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries for other versions. I disagree. In this article, I argue that plausible principles of ampliative transmission reveal a worry for deontological internalism in general.     

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.     

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.     

Skepticism about Skepticism about Moral Responsibility

This article rejects Gideon Rosen's skeptical argument that attributions of blameworthiness are never epistemically justified. Granting Rosen's controversial claim that an act is blameworthy only if it is either akratic or the causal upshot of some akratic act, I show that we can and should resist his skeptical conclusion. I show, first, that Rosen's argument is, at best, hostage to a much more global skepticism about attributions of praiseworthiness, doxastic justification, and other phenomena which essentially involve causal‐historical facts about mental states. I then show how, equipped with proper background knowledge, we can justifiedly attribute blameworthiness.     

The Role of Sensory Experience in Epistemic Justification: a Problem for Coherentism

The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification.     

The Need for Justification

Some series can go on indefinitely, others cannot, and epistemologists want to know in which class to place epistemic chains. Is it sensible or nonsensical to speak of a proposition or belief that is justified by another proposition or belief, ad infinitum? In large part the answer depends on what we mean by “justification.” Epistemologists have failed to find a definition on which everybody agrees, and some have even advised us to stop looking altogether. In spite of this, the present essay submits a few candidate definitions. It argues that, although not giving the final word, these candidates tell us something about the possibility of infinite epistemic chains. And it shows that they can short‐circuit a debate about doxastic justification.