Diversity and Justified Belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
David Basinger
Keyword(s):  
Justified Belief

Justificación, educación y libertad

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Mónica Gómez Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Epistemological Pluralism ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This paper argues the thesis that education should be understood as a guide that directs the young people towards reflexive and imaginative social practices that allow them to formulate new and varied hypotheses as well as alternative justifications. Based on Dewey, we will expose that a goal such as this is only applicable to members of a democratic society. Next, we present some features of onto-epistemological pluralism in relation to freedom and responsibility. It is concluded that there is no justification that is closer to truth or reality. The relevance of a justified belief with good reasons lies in its practical consequences for specific conditions of existence.

Evidence and Its Limits

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton Littlejohn
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Way Of Thinking

On a standard way of thinking about the relationships between evidence, reasons, and epistemic justification, a subject’s evidence consists of her potential reasons for her beliefs, these reasons constitute the normative reasons that bear on whether to believe, and justification is taken to result from relations between a subject’s potential reasons for her beliefs and those beliefs. This chapter argues that this view makes a number of mistakes about the rational roles of reasons and evidence and explores some parallels between practical and theoretical reasons. Just as justified action is unobjectionable action, justified belief is unobjectionable belief. Just as you cannot object to someone deciding to do something simply on the grounds that their reasons for acting didn’t give them strong reason to act, you cannot object to someone believing something simply on the grounds that they didn’t believe for reasons that gave their beliefs strong evidential support.

scholarly journals JUSTIFIED BELIEF IN A DIGITAL AGE: ON THE EPISTEMIC IMPLICATIONS OF SECRET INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boaz Miller ◽  
Isaac Record
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
Internet Technologies ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Justificatory Status

AbstractPeople increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject's beliefs that are formed based on internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.

Common Sense Propositions

Philosophy ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 48 (186) ◽  
pp. 363-379
Author(s):  
A. C. Ewing
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Physical Object ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Know How ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right ◽  
Past Experiences

Philosophers have not been sceptical only about metaphysics or religious beliefs. There are a great number of other beliefs generally held which they have had at least as much difficulty in justifying, and in the present article I ask questions as to the right philosophical attitude to these beliefs in cases where to our everyday thought they seem so obvious as to be a matter of the most ordinary common sense. A vast number of propositions go beyond what is merely empirical and cannot be seen to be logically necessary but are still believed by everybody in their daily life. Into this class fall propositions about physical things, other human minds and even propositions about one's own past experiences based on memory, for we are not now ‘observing’ our past. The phenomenalist does not escape the difficulty about physical things, for he reduces physical object propositions, in so far as true, not merely to propositions about his own actual experience but to propositions about the experiences of other human beings in general under certain conditions, and he cannot either observe or logically prove what the experiences of other people are or what even his own would be under conditions which have not yet been fulfilled. What is the philosopher to say about such propositions? Even Moore, who insisted so strongly that we knew them, admitted that we did not know how we knew them. The claim which a religious man makes to a justified belief that is neither a matter of purely empirical perception nor formally provable is indeed by no means peculiar to the religious. It is made de facto by everybody in his senses, whether or not he realizes that he is doing so. There is indeed a difference: while everyone believes in the existence of other human beings and in the possibility of making some probable predictions about the future from the past, not everybody holds religious beliefs, and although this does not necessarily invalidate the claim it obviously weakens it.

Normative Principles are Synthetic A Priori

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-383
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Open Question Argument ◽  
Moral Domains ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Open Question

AbstractI argue for the claim that there are instances of a priori justified belief – in particular, justified belief in moral principles – that are not analytic, i.e., that cannot be explained solely by the understanding we have of their propositions. §1–2 provides the background necessary for understanding this claim: in particular, it distinguishes between two ways a proposition can be analytic, Basis and Constitutive, and provides the general form of a moral principle. §§3–5 consider whether Hume's Law, properly interpreted, can be established by Moore's Open Question Argument, and concludes that it cannot: while Moore's argument – appropriately modified – is effective against the idea that moral judgments are either (i) reductively analyzable or (ii) Constitutive-analytic, a different argument is needed to show that they are not (iii) Basis-analytic. Such an argument is supplied in §6. §§7–8 conclude by considering how these considerations bear on recent discussions of “alternative normative concepts”, on the epistemology of intuitions, and on the differences between disagreement in moral domains and in other a priori domains such as logic and mathematics.

Virtue Epistemology as Anti-luck Epistemology

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Alexey Z. Chernyak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
General Study ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Mental Attitude ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The Status ◽  
Veritic Luck ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

The idea that knowledge as an individual mental attitude with certain propositional content is not only true justified belief but a belief the truth of which does not result from any kind of luck, is widely spread in contemporary epistemology. This account is known as anti-luck epistemology. A very popular explanation of the inconsistency of that concept of knowledge with the luck-dependent nature of truth (so called veritic luck taking place when a subject’s belief could not be true if not by mere coincidence) presumes that the status of propositional knowledge crucially depends on the qualities of actions that result in the corresponding belief, or processes backing them, which reflect the socalled intellectual virtues mainly responsible for subject’s relevant competences. This account known as Virtue Epistemology presumes that if a belief is true exclusively or mainly due to its dependence on intellectual virtues, it just cannot be true by luck, hence no place for lucky knowledge. But this thesis is hard to prove given the existence of true virtuous beliefs which could nevertheless be false if not for some lucky (for the knower) accident. This led to an appearance of virtue epistemological theories aimed specifically at an assimilation of such cases. Their authors try to represent the relevant situations as such where the contribution of luck is not crucial whereas the contribution of virtues is crucial. This article provides a critical analysis of the corresponding arguments as part of a more general study of the ability of Virtue Epistemology to provide justification for the thesis of incompatibility of propositional knowledge with veritic luck. It is shown that there are good reasons to doubt that Virtue Epistemology can do this.

Mystical Experience and Non–Basically Justified Belief

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Warrant ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Basic Beliefs

Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or epistemic warrant for these beliefs is not derived from other justified beliefs through inductive evidential support or deductive methods of inference. These ‘basic beliefs’ constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. One can give a reason for the justification of a basic belief even though the justification for that belief is not based on other beliefs. Thus, according to Chisholm, if asked what one's justification was for thinking that one knew, presently, that one is thinking about a city one takes to be Albuquerque, one could simply say ‘what justifies me…is simply the fact that I am thinking about a city I take to be Albuquerque’.

scholarly journals OBSERVAÇÕES CRÍTICAS SOBRE UMA RESENHA DE GUIDO IMAGUIRE DA OBRA: ESTRUTURA E SER. UM QUADRO REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO PARA UMA FILOSOFIA SISTEMÁTICA

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (126) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Lorenz B. Puntel
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Structures ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
Systematic Philosophy ◽  
The Status ◽  
Important Argument ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ontological Theory

Este artigo responde pormenorizadamente às críticas feitas por G. Imaguire em sua resenha do livro indicado no título (= ES). Trata-se principalmente de nove temas respectivamente teses de caráter central para a concepção exposta no livro. O presente artigo analisa cada um destes temas, em parte corrigindo erros de apresentação e de interpretação e em todos os casos respondendo às objeções de Imaguire. Trata-se dos seguintes temas/teses: (1) Para esclarecer o estatuto das sentenças filosóficas, ES propõe uma teoria dos três operadores que explicitam o caráter de sentenças: são estes o operador teórico, o operador prático e o operador estético. O artigo esclarece o sentido exato desta teoria. (2) ES apresenta uma nova definição de saber/conhecimento em oposição direta à já famosa definição “knowledge is true justified belief” articulada por E. Gettier. (3) ES defende uma concepção de orientação ontológica das estruturas formais fundamentais (lógicas e matemáticas); estas são esclarecidas. (4) Em ES é exposta e defendida uma nova concepção de ontologia em perfeita conformidade com a semântica de uma linguagem filosófica transparente; esta ontologia exclui o conceito de “substância” e critica o uso do conceito de “objeto”. (5) ES expõe uma nova teoria semântico-ontológica da verdade que tem como consequência um relativismo moderado da verdade. (6) ES formula um argumento muito especial contra o fisicalismo; o artigo explica pormenorizadamente este argumento. (7) A concepção exposta em ES afirma que o cristianismo, em virtude do caráter racional e teórico da teologia que o explicita, constitui, em oposição a outras religiões, uma temática com prioridade de importância e atenção para o filósofo sistemático. Neste artigo esta tese é explicada e defendida contra interpretações erradas. (8) O oitavo tema é a grande questão posta pelo conceito de mundo no contexto das relações entre teorias filosóficas e teorias científicas. O artigo esclarece uma série de mal-entendidos a respeito deste grande tema. (9) Finalmente, com relação a um argumento-chave que ES apresenta para fundamentar a tese que, por razões sistemáticas, se deve admitir uma dimensão absolutamente necessária do Ser, o artigo demonstra que a resenha comete um muito grave erro de interpretação, baseando neste erro uma crítica infundada ao argumento. O artigo esclarece extensamente o argumento, suas pressuposições e suas consequências.Abstract: This article is a detailed answer to G. Imaguire’s criticisms of the book Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy (hence referred as ES). Imaguire focuses on nine topics that are central to the book. The present article analyses each one of these theses, sometimes correcting errors made and misrepresentations introduced by Imaguire, and in all cases, responding to Imaguire’s objections. The theses are the following: (1) In order to clarify the status of theoretical sentences occurring in philosophical works, ES presents a theory about the three operators that make explicit the statuses of three mutually irreducible kinds of sentence: the theoretical operator, the practical operator, and the aesthetic operator. (2) ES offers a new definition of knowledge in significant opposition to the now-famous definition formulated by E. Gettier, “knowledge is true justified belief.” (3) ES defends an ontologically oriented conception of the fundamental formal (logical and mathematical) structures. (4) In ES, a new ontology is propounded in strong conformity with the semantics of a transparent philosophical language. This ontology rejects the category of substance and criticizes the widely used concept of object. (5) ES presents a completely new semantico-ontological theory of truth. One of its consequences is a moderate relativism with respect to truth. (6) ES presents a unique argument against physicalism; this article elaborates on it. (7) ES considers the phenomenon of religion and states that, due to its rational and theoretical theology, Christian religion, in opposition to other religions, provides a uniquely promising resource for philosophical considerations. (8) ES extensively thematizes the concept of world in connection with the problem of the relationship between philosophy and science. (9) Finally, ES develops the main features of a theory of Being as such and as a whole. ES offers especially an important argument on behalf of the thesis that the universal dimension of Being must be conceived of as two-dimensional: as the dimension of absolutely necessary Being and the dimension of contingent beings. This article reconstructs the exact meaning of the argument and explains its presuppositions and consequences.

Schlesinger on justified belief and probability

Analysis ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
P. Milne
Keyword(s):  
Justified Belief

Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 125-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
The Middle Ages

Aquinas is sometimes taken to hold a foundationalist theory of knowledge. So, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “Foundationalism has been the reigning theory of theories in the West since the high Middle Ages. It can be traced back as far as Aristotle, and since the Middle Ages vast amounts of philosophical thought have been devoted to elaborating and defending it‥ ‥ Aquinas offers one classic version of foundationalism.” And Alvin Plantinga says, “we can get a better understanding of Aquinas … if we see [him] as accepting some version of classical foundationalism. This is a picture or total way of looking at faith, knowledge, justified belief, rationality, and allied topics. This picture has been enormously popular in Western thought; and despite a substantial opposing ground-swell, I think it remains the dominant way of thinking about these topics.”

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