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Publication details

Year: 2015

Pages: 2987-3009

Series: Synthese

Full citation:

Samuel A. Taylor, "Is justification easy or impossible?", Synthese 192 (9), 2015, pp. 2987-3009.

Is justification easy or impossible?

getting acquainted with a middle road

Samuel A. Taylor

pp. 2987-3009

in: Magdalena Balcerak Jackson (ed), The roles of experience in a priori knowledge, Synthese 192 (9), 2015.

Abstract

Can a belief source confer justification when we lack antecedent justification for believing that it’s reliable? A negative answer quickly leads to skepticism. A positive answer, however, seems to commit one to allowing pernicious reasoning known as “epistemic bootstrapping.” Puzzles surrounding bootstrapping arise because we illicitly assume either that justification requires doxastic awareness of a source’s epistemic credentials or that there is no requirement that a subject be aware of these credentials. We can resolve the puzzle by splitting the horns and requiring a non-conceptual awareness of, or direct acquaintance with, a source’s legitimacy. Requiring non-conceptual as opposed to doxastic awareness halts the regress and avoids the skeptical results. On the other hand, requiring non-conceptual awareness also guarantees that we are aware of evidence for a source’s reliability prior to using that source to form justified beliefs; we thereby avoid the problem of allowing epistemic bootstrapping to generate the illicit gains in justification.

Publication details

Year: 2015

Pages: 2987-3009

Series: Synthese

Full citation:

Samuel A. Taylor, "Is justification easy or impossible?", Synthese 192 (9), 2015, pp. 2987-3009.