So, part two: theories of
justification. To start, a justification is the reason why a person
believes or “knows” something to be a truth. For example, someone
might hold the believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has
done so for thousands upon thousands of years. However, many
philosophers would argue that this is not a good enough reason but…
we will get to that.
Any beliefs that is considered
justified by the holder must be supported by a justifier. Justifiers
are basically evidence that support the belief. They may be a belief,
a conscious mental state, facts about ourselves and/or the
environment or some combination of the three.
We are all responsible for the beliefs
we hold and to be open minded to new beliefs should our
justifications be proven not to be truth. This is our intellectual
right. But, how do we determine if a belief to be justified? Or if a
belief is unjustified? Well, there are many different theories.
Let’s start with coherentism. This is
the belief that something is justified if it holds true based on
other evidence. So, if you go out your front door in the morning and
your car is wet, the grass is wet and there are puddles in the pot
holes and this wasn’t the case when you left your car last, you may
believe it’s justified to say that it rained in the time between
those two events. And you’d probably be right unless your neighbor
got really carried away with his garden hose. However, consider when
you are dreaming. You’d be completely justified while dreaming to
believe that you are flying if you are indeed soaring through the
clouds but that of course doesn’t mean you are actually able to fly.
The most famous objection is that of Bertrand Russell. His claim is
that a belief and it’s negation would individually hold true given
some set of beliefs therefore the theory isn’t valid. Most are
willing to ignore this objection since the theory is not typically
concerned with the set of all possible beliefs but the set of beliefs
one holds.
Externalism and Internalism are another
pair of theories that are sort of opposites. Externalism states that
beliefs are dependent on external forces (things outside the mind)
while internalism states that only what does on inside the mind is
needed for justification. Another similar theory is evidentialism
which defines that a belief is justified only if it has supporting
evidence and only that evidence is important.
Foundationalism
is the theory that beliefs are justified if they follow from commonly
held beliefs. A criticism of this is that commonly held beliefs have
to follow from some other beliefs and this can go on forever without
ever reaching a foundation. Skeptics simply say that we cannot be
certain of any beliefs therefore any belief that follows from a set
of beliefs is also questionable. This theory can be combined with
coherentism defining a new theory known as Foundherentism. A commonly
used metaphor to explain the idea of this theory is a crossword
puzzle. The clues are the a person’s experiential evidence and the
already filled in entries that intersect the current one represent
the reasons for a belief.
Infinitism
is a theory that says something can be justified is there is an
infinite chain of reasons. This may be a linear chain or a circular
chain. Chains that are linear would be something like, A leads to B,
which leads to C which leads to D and so on forever or until a belief
is found that is known to be true (think a foundation). A circular
chain would have lead back to A.
Reformed
epistemology holds that the most fundamental belief is the existence
of God and this does not need to be inferred from any other belief.
It is supposedly a way of explaining away that the belief in God is
unjustified. The argument for this, posed by Alvin Plantinga is that
if we can assume the existent of other minds (that others have
consciousness) without evidence it is also rational to believe in God
even though it is lacking structured evidence. Many argue however
that this theory had no merit and no reason to support it. This is
not an attack on whether or not God exists but if the belief in God
is rational based on this theory.
And
of course there is skepticism which holds one of two views (or both).
One is that knowledge cannot be known but can be justified or that
truths can be known however not justified.
So,
there you have it. Theories of justification. But even this doesn’t
cover all of epistemology. So, until next time… have an aspirin,
take a deep breath and try not to question if anything is real too
much.