Abstract
Colin Cheyne has argued that under certain circumstances an internalist or deontological theory of epistemic justification will give rise to a paradox. The paradox, he argues, arises when a principle of epistemic justification is both justifiably believed (in terms of the theory) and false. To avoid this paradox, Cheyne recommends abandoning the principle of justification-transference, which states that acts of believing made on the basis of a justifiably-believed principle are themselves justified. Since such a principle seems essential to any internalist theory of justified believing, internalist theories may also need to be abandoned. I argue that while some theories of epistemic justification may indeed give rise to this paradox, an internalist or deontological theory of subjective justification will avoid it. The reason for this is that a false principle of justified believing does not render acts of believing subjectively unjustified, provided that the agent does not realize that the principle is false.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The assumption here is that justification has just two possible truth-values, so that what is not justified is unjustified. Alvin Goodman (1993, pp. 274–275) suggests the possibility of a third, neutral category – that of non-justified but not necessarily unjustified beliefs – but I shall not pursue that possibility here.
- 2.
Throughout this paper, I have understood the falsity of the principle of epistemic justification to be objective falsity. In a recent conversation, Cheyne has suggested that the falsity in his scenario should be thought of as falsity according to the theory of justification being employed, rather than falsity simpliciter. But on this rather different assumption, my argument would still go through. To anticipate, what I am arguing is that an agent could be subjectively justified in accepting beliefs on the basis of a false principle of epistemic justification principle, provided that she does not realize that it is false. But this can be easily reworded to accommodate Colin’s suggestion: an agent could be subjectively justified in accepting beliefs on the basis of a principle of epistemic justification that is inconsistent with another principle she holds, provided that she does not realize that it is inconsistent. In neither case does a paradox arise.
- 3.
By “reasons for believing” I mean those factors that are the basis on which the agent believes. It is not easy to define this basing relation (see Korcz 2010), but very often a causal account seems appropriate. An agent’s reasons for believing are those factors that are bringing about (or sustaining) her belief.
- 4.
Any attempt to articulate an internalist view will be controversial. My view assumes that for justified believing the agent must be aware of those factors – other beliefs or doxastic experiences – that are her reasons for believing. But she need not have formed any belief about (a) the fact that they are her reasons for believing or (b) their adequacy as reasons. What is required for justification is that she would, on reflection, consider them to be adequate reasons. (The “adequacy” here is, of course, epistemic: an adequate reason is such that if her belief that p is true, she can be said to know p.) By taking this line, I hope to avoid the notorious infinite regress problem (Ruloff 2009, pp. 144–145). But it also seems to me that a person who has long held a justified belief could say, quite intelligibly, “Yes, my belief that p is the reason I believe that q, and it seems to me a good reason, even though I’ve never reflected on its evidential force before.”
- 5.
This is a question that Alvin Plantinga, in developing his Reformed Epistemology, entirely neglects.
- 6.
In an earlier draft of this paper, I distinguished four cases (rather than merely two): (a) subjectively justified belief in a false principle of subjective justification, (b) subjectively justified belief in a false principle of objective justification, (c) objectively justified belief in a false principle of subjective justification, and (d) objectively justified belief in a false principle of objective justification. While this did exhaust the alternatives, I now believe it to have been unnecessarily confusing. But for the record, the case I am here considering is most accurately characterized as an example of (d). None of the others could rise to a paradox, since there is no reason why a belief cannot be subjectively justified but objectively unjustified or objectively justified but subjectively unjustified.
References
Cheyne, C. 2009. A paradox of justified believing. Ratio NS 12: 278–290.
Feldman, R. 2000. The ethics of belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60(3): 667–695.
Goodman, A. 1993. Epistemic folkways and scientific epistemology. Philosophical Issues 3: 271–285.
Henderson, D., and T.E. Horgan. 2001. Practicing safe epistemology. Philosophical Studies 102: 227–258.
Korcz, K.A. 2010. The epistemic basing relation. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/basing-epistemic/.
Kvanvig, J.L. 1984. Subjective justification. Mind 93: 71–84.
Lehrer, K. 1974. Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon.
Plantinga, A. 2000. Warranted Christian belief. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, J.L. 1979. A plethora of epistemological theories. In Justification and knowledge: New studies in epistemology, ed. G.S. Pappas, 93–113. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Ruloff, C. 2009. Epistemic supervenience and internalism: A trilemma. Theoria 75: 129–151.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dawes, G.W. (2012). Justified Believing: Avoiding the Paradox. In: Maclaurin, J. (eds) Rationis Defensor. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3983-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3983-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-3982-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-3983-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)