Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T16:54:19.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

JUSTIFICATION AS ‘WOULD-BE’ KNOWLEDGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2012

Aidan McGlynn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In light of the failure of attempts to analyse knowledge as a species of justified belief, a number of epistemologists have suggested that we should instead understand justification in terms of knowledge. This paper focuses on accounts of justification as a kind of ‘would-be’ knowledge. According to such accounts a belief is justified just in case any failure to know is due to uncooperative external circumstances. I argue against two recent accounts of this sort due to Alexander Bird and Martin Smith. A further aim is to defend a more traditional conception, according to which justification is a matter of sufficiently high evidential likelihood. In particular, I suggest that this conception of justification offers a plausible account of lottery cases: cases in which one believes a true proposition – for example that one's lottery ticket will lose – on the basis of probabilistic evidence.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 361 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adler, Jonathan. 2005. ‘Reliabilist Justification (Or Knowledge) as a Good Truth-Ratio.’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 86: 445–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Alexander. 2007. ‘Justified Judging.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74: 81–110.Google Scholar
Coffman, E. J. 2010. ‘Is Justified Belief Knowledge? Critical Notice of Jonathan Sutton, Without Justification.’ Philosophical Books, 51: 1–21.Google Scholar
Comesaña, Juan. 2009. ‘What Lottery Problem for Reliabilism?’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90: 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conee, Earl, and Feldman, Richard. 2001. ‘Internalism Defended.’ Reprinted inConee, E. and Feldman, R., Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DeRose, Keith. 1999. ‘Introduction.’ In DeRose, K. and Warfield, T. A (eds), Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gettier, Edmund. 1963. ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ Analysis, 23: 121–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorne, John. 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kelp, Christoph. 2011. ‘Not Without Justification.’ Dialectica, 65: 581–95.Google Scholar
Lackey, Jennifer. 2007. ‘Norms of Assertion.’ Noûs, 41: 594–626.Google Scholar
Lasonen-Aarnio, Maria. 2008. ‘Single Premise Deduction and Risk.’ Philosophical Studies, 141: 157–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1996. ‘Elusive Knowledge.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 549–67.Google Scholar
McGlynn, Aidan. 2011. ‘Believing Things Unknown.’ Noûs, publ. online: 29 Dec., doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2011.00843.x.Google Scholar
McGlynn, Aidan. In progress. Knowledge First? Under contract with Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Nelkin, Dana. K. 2000. ‘The Lottery Paradox, Knowledge, and Rationality.’ Philosophical Review, 109: 373–409.Google Scholar
Pritchard, Duncan. 2008. ‘Sensitivity, Safety, and Antiluck Epistemology.’ In Greco, J. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Smith, Martin. 2009. ‘Transmission Failure Explained.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79: 164–89.Google Scholar
Smith, Martin. 2010. ‘What Else Justification Could Be.’ Noûs, 44: 10–31.Google Scholar
Smith, Martin. 2012a. ‘Two Notions of Epistemic Risk.’ Erkenntnis, publ. online: 17 April, doi: 10.1007/s10670-012-9376-5.Google Scholar
Smith, Martin. 2012b. ‘Some Thoughts on the JK-Rule.’ Noûs, publ. online: 22 June, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2012.00866.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smithies, Declan. 2012. ‘The Normative Role of Knowledge.’ Noûs, 46: 265–88.Google Scholar
Sutton, Jonathan. 2007. Without Justification. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, Jonathan. 1990. ‘Are There Counterexamples to the Closure Principle?’ In Roth, M. and Ross, G. (eds), Doubting: Contemporary Perspectives on Skepticism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Weiner, Matthew. 2005. ‘Must We Know What We Say?’ Philosophical Review, 114: 227–51.Google Scholar
Weiner, Matthew. 2007. ‘Norms of Assertion.’ Philosophy Compass, 2: 187–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiting, Daniel. Forthcoming. ‘Nothing but the Truth: On the Norms and Aims of Belief.’ In Chan, T. (ed.), The Aim of Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar