We need justification for our beliefs. The idea is that where do these justifications come from. Are they based on good reasoning, evidence, personal experiences, or etc.? The broader question is whether justification is something internal or external? I believe one should be externalist about justification.
What is Internalism? Internalists argue that someone is justified about something if the thinker can recognize things from the inside. Only things that one has “first-person access” are relevant to see if a belief is reasonable or not.“Internalism treats justification as a purely internal matter: If p is justified for S, then S must be aware (or at least be immediately capable of being aware) of what makes it justified and
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This problem was initially designed against reliabilism. The problem explains that there could be identical individuals who have the same evidence for a problem, yet one’s evidence is not “truth indicative”. To illustrate, reliabalism argue that because one lives in a normal world, trusting eyes, fro example, is a reliable method, thus visual beliefs are justified. However, consider my twin is the victim of a Matrix scenario- she is a brain in a vat- and she is having the same experience as I do in a normal world due to the stimulation of her brain. When we both seem to see an object, I am justified in my belief-considering reliabalist’s method and one’s intuition- since there is actually a tree. But there isn’t any tree in the case of my twin in the matrix scenario, and her experience is systematically wrong. Is her belief justified? Since we have the same evidence and experience, if my twin’s belief is not justified then mine is neither. If my belief is justified, then so is her belief. Internalist argues that justification should not depend on whether one is deceived in an evil demon …show more content…
“S’s belief that p is justified only if the processes that produced S’s belief are reliable in normal worlds” (1986: 107). The new evil demon argument deals with the reliability requirement for justification. So Goldman tried to introduce additional sufficient arrangements for justification. Based on the new statement, the reliable process, which produces a belief, must be reliable in a “normal” world. In a normal world one’s general belief –the perceptual experience- about the actual world are true. As a result, my belief that there is a tree in front of that window is justified since it is reliable in a normal world, but my twin’s belief turn out to be unjustified.
2-Weak Justification and Strong Justification) The Normal world Reliabalism did not satisfy Goldman as a sufficient response to the new evil demon problem. He came up with this new idea of “weal” and “strong” justification. According to him: “Strong Justification: S’s belief that p is strongly justified only if the processes that produced S’s belief are reliable in the kind of environment in which S’s belief was
This is the third and final difference between Schafer and Williams’ relativism. For Williams, it is neither sufficient, nor necessary that a peer in a moral disagreement want to convert to their opponent’s “system. For Schafer, it must at least be necessary that a peer in a moral disagreement want to converge with their opponent. The truth-value of the content of a proposition relies on the technical notion of truth, trues. Therefore, for two opponents to converge on a moral belief, they must both have the same conception of trues about that belief.
The argumentative aim of this paper seeks to address Bernard Williams in his piece ‘Internal and External Reasons’ and show that Williams is in fact correct in saying there are in fact no external reasons and all reasons are actually internal.
ABSTRACT: My aim is to raise two points against naturalizing epistemology. First, against Quine’s version of naturalizing epistemology, I claim that the traditional questions of epistemology are indispensable, in that they impose themselves in every attempt to construct an epistemology. These epistemological questions are pre- and extra-scientific questions; they are beyond the scientific domain of research, thus, for a distinct province of inquiry. Second, I claim that no naturalistic account can be given as an answer to the traditional question of justification. I take Goldman’s and Haack’s accounts as examples to support my claim. The traditional demand of justification is to start from nowhere. Naturalizing justification is to start form somewhere. The two approaches are, thus, necessarily incompatible with each other. So, the accounts given by the naturalists are not answers to the traditional problem of justification. To remain compatible with themselves, the naturalists should have conceded that the problem of justification is illegitimate or incoherent. The fact that they did not I take as additional evidence to support my claim that the traditional questions of epistemology are indispensable: they impose themselves and are, thus, hard to eliminate.
...ate first encounter justification. This justification is what leads dogmatists to perceptual knowledge. Skeptics challenge this perceptual knowledge that dogmatist claim to gain by questioning their beliefs. We notice how James Pryor attempts to respond to these skeptics through his use of the modest anti-skeptical project. Although the point of this project was to come to know things without having to contradict obvious facts given about perception, the project failed because it only established satisfaction for the dogmatist. Dogmatists also argued the grounds of independent justification in regards to skepticism but what they did not realize is that independent justification is much needed to attain belief in other aspects of premises. Henceforth, the dogmatist response against skepticism is not plausible because it cannot prove the skeptic’s theory inaccurate.
At this point in Goldman's paper he begins to examine knowledge through testimony stating: "This too can be analyzed causally. p causes a person T to believe p, by perception. T's belief of p gives rise to (causes) his asserting p. T's asserting p causes S, by auditory perception, to believe that T is asserting p. S infers that T believes p, and from this in turn, he infers that p is a fact."which simply means that p causing T to believe it and T stating said belief in front of S leads S to believe that p must be a fact. After stating this Goldman points out that if miscommunication is somehow involved in this transaction, such as the accidental removal of "not" when referring to p in a newspaper article, then S will not have the correct causal chain leading to his belief therefore he would not have knowledge on p.
The next question necessarily revolves around the delivery mechanism. Moral realists must argue that moral judgments have at least an initial plausibility, for if grave errors are made in either the causal connection or the delivery mechanism, it would not seem that there would be a valid reason for believing that any of the moral judgments we make are judgments of fact. As David Brink argues, “the degree of credibility of considered moral beliefs probably corresponds more closely with the credibility of these [credible theoretical beliefs] Ö All I claim is that considered moral beliefs have initial credibility.”4
There are many arguments for moral realism, one of which is presented by David Enoch, who posits a unique explanation of how normative truths can exist. He argues for moral realism by using his Indispensability Argument, which explains the necessity of normative facts in deliberation. I will argue that Enoch’s claim is valid in that it fairs well against opposition, however it shows weakness by not addressing moral subjectivity.
Goldman's requirement that we must have a causal connection explaining that some proposition is true and one's believing that a proposition is true is required to avert the Gettier problems, according to Goldman. “Jones owns a Ford” is a proposition which Goldman makes in an example that he uses to explain how this causal connection is required in order to avoid the Gettier problem. In the example he lays out a disjunction which says that Smith, the believing person, believes that “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona”.
Justification by faith is of great importance, it is the foundation of our whole position and standing with God. Martin Luther wrote, “ When the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen.” John Calvin called it “ the main hinge on which religion turns.” Thomas Watson said, “Justification is the very hinge and pillar of Christianity.” The issue of Justification was the primary dispute between the reformers and the Roman Catholic Church, and the problem was, and still is, between salvation by faith alone and salvation based on good works. So, why is justification so important to us? Because Justification by faith is the answer to the problem, that has followed human beings ever since the fall of Adam. How can a man be right with God his maker? How can a man stand in the presence of God? This is what Paul wrote in the letter of Romans 5:1 “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The act of Justification enables us to be right with our God.
Knowledge can be achieved either through the justification of a true belief or for the substantive externalist, through a “natural or law like connection between the truth of what is believed and the person’s belief” (P.135). Suppose a man named George was implanted with a chip at birth, which causes him to utter the time in a rare Russian dialect. His girlfriend Irina, who happens to speak the same Russian dialect, realizes that every time she taps his shoulder, he tells her the time and he is always right. She knows that he is right because she checks her watch. Because she thinks this is cute, she never tells him what it is that he is saying. One day, Irina’s watch breaks but instead of getting it fixed, she just taps George on the shoulder whenever she needs to ask for the time.
Rationalism has had it's fair degree of criticism throughout it's history and some have been stronger than others. One of these objections highlighted is that rationalism is prone to ultimate disparities: contrasting a priori insights can and do lead to a stalemate. The second objection is that there must be some form of metajustification for a priori justification. While strong rationalism seems to run into difficulties with these objections, BonJour's moderate rationalism manages to deal with them. This essay will analyze both of these objections and highlight BonJour's effective moderate rationalist responses.
In this situation, there is no “logical universe” that helps to justify a belief, but rather shows perspectives that are common in everyday life. This basically explains the set of rules that individuals go by to have a more practical and normal life. An individual would learn that the situation they may go through is not based on correspondence between a belief and a fact in society, but coherence between a belief and other beliefs in a single individual. In other words, the exposed truth is a property of other consecutive congruent beliefs one has thought in their minds before experiencing something in the present. This is the coherence theory of justification; when something is signified as true with this justification, then this strongly has the official truth even if the opposing individual argues. In most circumstances, this theory leaves no room for fitting another justification into what has already been justified to be
(q), his belief that he sees a barn, isn’t justified, though. Therefore, Dom cannot know (q). The internalism of my account is obvious. What’s required for justification of (q) is different for Henry and Dom because of each’s belief about the kind of environment he is in. It is the belief about the environment and not the environment that matters. In other words, two people could be in the exact same circumstances but what required for justification would be different because of the beliefs they have. Causal accounts of knowledge can’t account for why Henry is justified for (q), but Dom is not. My account is not a causal account; as is shown in the Dom variation above, my account has no problem accounting for the different justifications required for Dom and for Henry.
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
Internally caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under the personal control of the individual. Externally caused behavior is seen as resulting from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation.