Title: Justification and the Truth-Connection By CLAYTON LITTLEJOHN
Abstract:What is the relation between justification and truth? According to one widely shared view, acquiring justification for a given belief raises the probability that that belief is true. Justification is ...What is the relation between justification and truth? According to one widely shared view, acquiring justification for a given belief raises the probability that that belief is true. Justification is here seen as truth-conducive though not truth-guaranteeing. Those who disagree typically deny the truth-conduciveness of justification. In Justification and the Truth-Connection Clayton Littlejohn defends still another view: Justification is factive and truth-guaranteeing. Littlejohn thus adds an interesting heterodox view to the debate between internalists and externalists about justification.1 In the long first, introductory chapter Littlejohn argues for a deontological view of justification: One justifiably believes something just in case one meets one’s epistemic obligations and doesn’t violate the basic epistemic norms, especially to believe something only if it is true (1–4).2 The nature of justification can be discovered by identifying our epistemic obligations. Littlejohn distinguishes clearly and discusses the relations between personal, doxastic and propositional justification3 (contrasting them with knowledge, too), making it clear that he is focusing on doxastic justification (5–11). In the main part of the chapter, he discusses a series of common arguments for internalism and for externalism, dismissing them as non-conclusive in the end (18–61). The second chapter picks up here and argues that considerations about epistemic value (defending evidentialism or epistemic consequentialism) do not tell us what our epistemic obligations are and thus don’t settle the debate between internalists and externalists.Read More
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-07-30
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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