scholarly journals Internalism and the problem of an isolated epistemic community

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Zivan Lazovic
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Internalist Account

In this paper the author deals with one form of relativism which stems from the internalist account of epistemic justification. In the recent epistemological literature this form of relativism is usually indicated as the problem of an isolated epistemic community. By way of an example concerning an isolated epistemic community, it is shown that internalism is unable to provide a consistent account of epistemic justification due to the fact that internalist justification cannot secure the objective connection between beliefs and truth making it the case that one's epistemically justified belief is likely to be true. That means that in explaining epistemic justification we have to resort to some externalist requirements.

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 Two externalist accounts of epistemic justification

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Zivan Lazovic
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
The State ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Causal History ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Reliable Indication ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs

This article deals with two prominent versions of externalist account of epistemic justification, the reliable indication theory and the reliable process theory. According to the reliable indication theory, a belief is justified if it provides a reliable indication of the occurence of the state of affairs which makes it true. The reliable process theory holds that a belief is justified if it has been formed by a reliable cognitive process. The main contentions of this two accounts are analyzed and compared in the light of three more general and fundamental externalist ideas: (1) justification need not be cognitive available to the person whose belief is in question; (2) justification should be connected to the truth of the belief in such a way that it makes the case that one?s epistemically justified belief is likely to be true; and (3) justification of one?s belief depends on the causal history of the belief.

Deductive Justification

Dialogue ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Canary ◽  
Douglas Odegard
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Reflection Principle ◽  
Valid Argument ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Critical Attention

The principle that epistemic justification is necessarily transmitted to all the known logical consequences of a justified belief continues to attract critical attention. That attention is not misplaced. If the Transmission Principle is valid, anyone who thinks that a given belief is justified must defend the view that every known consequence of the belief is also justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection principle is modified, the possibility of deductive justification is threatened. If some known consequence fails to be justified, the failure may extend to every known consequence. To reject Transmission is to insert a logical gap between the justification of a premise and the justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection on the Transmission Principle therefore usefully brings us face to face with the following dilemma: accept the principle and hand Cartesian scepticism a powerful weapon, or modify the principle and risk undermining deductive justification.

Reasoning

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Volume Flow ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Normative Requirements

Reasoning is just beginning to emerge as a central topic in its own right in analytic philosophy. One reason for this is the growing interest in the epistemology of inference. What justifies us in making some inferences and not others, and under what conditions does inference lead to justified belief? This growing interest coincides with a “cognitive turn” in epistemology more generally, an increasing awareness that epistemological theorizing should be informed by what we know from psychology and the philosophy of mind. At the same time, analytic philosophers are also beginning to investigate ways in which notions from epistemology relate to normative notions from the theory of rationality—for example, by looking at how one’s evidence relates to what one ought to believe, or whether reasoning that obeys normative requirements preserves epistemic justification. And finally, there is a growing recognition that many of the central questions about reasoning and rationality are best addressed by setting aside the traditional separation between theoretical and practical reasoning; reasoning has a nature and significance that we should strive to understand independently of whether it is reasoning about what to believe or about how to act. The essays on reasoning in this volume flow from all of these important developments and take them in provocative new directions.

Neurath’s Boat Will Take You Where You Want to Go: On Naturalized Epistemology and Historicism

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-414
Author(s):  
David Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

Abstract Naturalized epistemology is not a recent invention, nor is it a philosophical invention. Rather, it is a cognitive phenomena that is pervasive and desirable in the way of human epistemic engagement with their world. It is a matter of the way that one’s cognitive processes can be modulated by information gotten from those same or wider cognitive processes. Such modulational control enhances the reliability of one’s cognitive processes in many ways – and judgments about objective epistemic justification consistently evince a reasonable demand for it. However, with suitable modulational control in place within an agent or a community of agents, the fitting cognitive processes take time to generate information that then engenders changes in processes and norms. Further, as there are significant historical and biographical contingencies involving trajectories through one’s environment, there are contingencies in the information and modifications that will be engendered by suitable modulational control. As a result, what makes for objectively justified belief at a time will vary – as the fruits of suitable modulational control accrue over time. This is a moderate form of historicism about epistemic justification.

The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Role

What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? This book argues that consciousness plays an essential role in explaining how we can acquire knowledge and epistemically justified belief about ourselves and our surroundings. On this view, our mental lives cannot be preserved in unconscious creatures—zombies—who behave just as we do. Only conscious creatures have epistemic justification to form beliefs about the world. Zombies cannot know anything about the world, since they have no epistemic justification to believe anything. On this view, all epistemic justification depends ultimately on consciousness. This book builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. The book is divided into two parts, which approach the theory of epistemic justification from opposite directions. Part I argues from the bottom up by drawing on considerations in the philosophy of mind about the role of consciousness in mental representation, perception, cognition, and introspection. Part II argues from the top down by arguing from general principles in epistemology about the nature of epistemic justification. These mutually reinforcing arguments form the basis for a unified theory of the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, one that bridges the gap between epistemology and the philosophy of mind.

Skill-based engagement with a rich landscape of affordances as an alternative to thinking through other minds

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Kiverstein ◽  
Erik Rietveld
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Internalist Account

Abstract Veissière and colleagues make a valiant attempt at reconciling an internalist account of implicit cultural learning with an externalist account that understands social behaviour in terms of its environment-involving dynamics. However, unfortunately the author's attempt to forge a middle way between internalism and externalism fails. We argue their failure stems from the overly individualistic understanding of the perception of cultural affordances they propose.

Consciousness, Metacognition, & Perceptual Reality Monitoring

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakwan Lau
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Reality Monitoring ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
Subjective Level

I introduce an empirically-grounded version of a higher-order theory of conscious perception. Traditionally, theories of consciousness either focus on the global availability of conscious information, or take conscious phenomenology as a brute fact due to some biological or basic representational properties. Here I argue instead that the key to characterizing the consciousness lies in its connections to belief formation and epistemic justification on a subjective level.

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.

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