How Can Knowledge Be Justified?

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How Can Knowledge Be Justified?

• Foundationalism and Coherentism

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Questions about Knowledge

• Epistemologists ask two basic questions
• The Source question What gives us confidence
  in our claims to knowledge?
• The Justification question Why should these
  sources of confidence be trusted?

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Class Exercise (individual)

• Write down five statements that you believe are
  true.
• Try to vary the subject matter of these
  statements
• Rank these statements from most to least certain

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Class Exercise (small group)

• Compare and Discuss Your Selections
• Is there general agreement about the statements?
• Why is there agreement or disagreement? That is,
  on what criteria do you base your views?

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Class Exercise (small group)

• Expand Your Discussion
• For any one belief you accept, what evidence
  would persuade you that it isnt true?
• Formulate the principles or criteria you have
  used to make these decisions.

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Knowledge v. Belief
Common Sense Claims to knowledge must be
supported by something usually, by evidence or
logic.
Today is Tuesday.
Evidence checking a calendar, the date on a
newspaper, etc.
Logic remembering that yesterday was Monday and
inferring that today is Tuesday.
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Foundationalism
Ultimately, claims to knowledge must rest on
something that is self-evidently true.
For evidence How do you know the calendar is
correct?
For logic how do you know yesterday was
Monday?
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Foundationalism
Without a stopping place, we would be involved in
an infinite regress.
This would mean that our claims to knowledge
could never be supported we could always wonder
if our support was reliable/acceptable.
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Foundationalism

• There is a Basis for Knowledge that We Can Trust
  Implicitly

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Foundationalism
Thus, the Foundationalist argues that some
beliefs are known to be true self-evidently
1. Certain kinds of perceptual experiences
2. Certain basic logical principles
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Problems with Foundationalism
1. People argue over supposedly self- evident
things.
Example The Principle of Sufficient Reason
2. Foundationalism seems to apply to basic
beliefs better than to complex beliefs and
knowledge-building practices.
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Transition to Coherentism
Suppose there is no self-evident foundation for
our beliefs.
R (Its raining) 1. Justified by S (I see the
rain) 2. Justified by T (sight gives me
truth) 3. Justified by ?
If the foundation is uncertain, everything built
on the foundation is uncertain.
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Interregnum
Consider the question of whether or not to
consider a person trustworthy.
There is no direct empirical confirmation of
trustworthiness.
We are aware of degrees of trustworthiness.
How do we come to our decision about the
trustworthiness of a person?
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Coherentist Considerations
Deliverances that might support the belief that
a person is trustworthy
Others attest to this.
There are physical records or known data
attesting to this (loans paid back on time work
produced as promised, keeping confidences).
Apparent anomalies can be explained (an unpaid
loan forgiven by the lender).
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Coherentist Considerations
Deliverances that might support the belief that
a person is trustworthy
Others attest to this.
Others attest to this personal testimony
There are physical records attesting to this
(loans paid back on time work produced as
promised).
There are physical records attesting to this
(loans paid back on time work produced as
promised) objective evidence
Apparent anomalies can be explained reference
to other things we know
Apparent anomalies can be explained.
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The Coherentist View

• We Rightly Trust Multiple, Supportive Systems of
  Statements to Produce Beliefs on which We Can
  Rely.

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Basic Principle of Coherentism
The acceptability of individual sentencesis
derivative, stemming from their role in a tenable
system. (p. 35)
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Working Model of Coherentism
The stolen Latin book.
Three individually unreliable and unrelated
students testify that they saw a young man with
green spiked hair in the hallway at the time of
the theft.
the fact that the three reports provide the
same antecedently improbable description
inclines us to believe it. (p. 36)
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Coherence Among Beliefs Means
Individual beliefs do support one another and
(importantly) dont conflict with one another
at least in ways that we cannot explain.
The aging geometry teachers testimony that she
saw a young man in a green hat.
The teacher is too old to even imagine that
someone might have green hair.
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Our Model, Revisited
Object-level deliverances immediate data and
beliefs relevant to the case at hand.
The various testimonies, including the aging
teachers
Contravening considerations data/beliefs that
threaten the consensus of beliefs.
The aging teachers claim that the green stuff
was a hat, not hair.
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Dealing with Conflicting Claims/Data
Higher-order commitments the rules and
methods developed over time to help us sort
through immediate data and beliefs (or
object-level deliverances).
The conditions under which contravening
considerations can be dismissed.
When otherwise unreliable deliverances can be
accepted, etc.
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Belief and Practice
Coherence provides the internal justification
for accepting a belief or claim.
Successful actions based on those beliefs provide
external justification for accepting a belief
or claim. (p. 41)
On the arrest and questioning of the green-haired
young man, he confesses.
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One Important Qualification
Elgin is supporting coherentism as a theory of
justification, not a theory of truth.
She is describing the grounds on which we must,
and can, accept claims as our working truths,
even if those grounds dont establish that they
are in fact true (beyond doubt).