The Autonomy of Justification
This chapter clarifies similarities and differences between justification and knowledge. Justification is characteristically produced in ordinary perceptual experiences, but similar sensory justification can occur without any external object as cause. Here the justifying elements remain accessible to the subject by introspection or reflection, and they are adducible in a process of justifying beliefs about ostensibly perceived objects. Knowledge is not process-relative in the same way. Perceptual knowledge can indeed arise where justificatory processes are not possible for the knower. It is also external in requiring actual causal connections to relevant truthmaking facts. This external causal grounding may yield a reliable route to truth without providing, as is normal, internally accessible grounds of justification. Justification, then, is autonomous in a certain way relative to knowledge, as the latter is autonomous in a certain way relative to the former. Their similarities and common co-occurrence must not be allowed to obscure our view of their differences.