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Justified Belief and Internal Acceptability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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Certain examples involving negatively relevant evidence (hereafter, nre) are trouble for reliabilists, since they show that reliability is not sufficient for justification. Two approaches for dealing with these examples within the reliabilist framework have been taken. Neither approach, however, can account for all cases involving nre. This I will argue. I will explain the two approaches briefly, then describe a counter example which calls for a difference approach. To handle the case I describe, one needs torequire that the agent's belief be ‘internally acceptable’ as well as reliable.
Many examples show that reliability is insufficient. Consider a modification of an example by Goldman, which he used to make a different point. Driving through the country, Andy looks to the right, sees a barn, and comes to believe that the object he sees is a barn. His belief, however, is not justified because he possesses nre, viz., his false, but justified, belief that the majority of bam-like objects in the area are barn facsimiles which, under the present visual circumstances, are almost indistinguishable from real barns.
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References
1 These approaches are extracted from discussions by Swain, Marshall Reasons and Knowledge (Ithica: Cornell University Press 1981);Google Scholar Goldman, Alvin ‘What is Justified Belief?’, in Pappas, George ed., Justification and Knowledge (Dordrecht: Reidel 1979), 1–23;Google Scholar Schmitt, Frederick F. ‘Realiability, Objectivity, and the Background of Justification,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1984).Google Scholar 1-15; Kornblith, Hilary ‘Beyond Foundationalism and the Coherence Theory,’ The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), 597–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kornblith, it should be noted, does not endorse reliabilism.
2 Must this belief be justified in order to be nre7 Schmitt thinks so (Schmitt, 7, footnote), but I'm not sure. Suppose that Andy acquired this belief about the barn facsimiles from a fortune teller. It seems to me that his belief that the object he sees is a bam would still be unjustified. In this paper, however, I will remain neutral on this issue, though in the examples I use, the nre-beliefs will be justified. I might add, here, that, strictly speaking, the belief is not the nre, but rather the proposition believed.
3 See Pollock, John L. ‘Reliability and Justified Belief,‘ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1984), 103–14,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for more on this important distinction. The terms I use are borrowed from Pollock.
4 Swain, 38-40; Swain has another objection, viz., that ‘for almost any belief we have, we will have at least some reasons that are negatively relevant … [viz.,] the statistical fact that in the past some of our beliefs, no matter how well justified, have turned out to be false’ (Swain, 39). But it is presumably because the agent possesses counter-balancing evidence to this statistical fact that accounts for the fact that it does not defeat the justification of his belief. So this objection is really a form of the other.
5 Their formulations differ somewhat from each other's and the one here. But they seem to me similar and extensionally equivalent. The counter-example I give later applies equally effectively to their formulations. It might be proposed that e* be restricted to propositions that the agent justifiably believes. On this, see footnote 2.
6 Goldman's proposal (Goldman, 20) does not contain the proviso, and therefore is open to my objection to dropping the proviso.
7 Schmitt, 8
8 Goldman states (Goldman, 15), ‘A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. If the original evidence was compelling, the cognizer's original belief may have been justified; and this justificational status may have been preserved through memory.’ George Pappas discusses these cases in detail in ‘Lost Justification,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy V 1980 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
9 A view of memory like this is developed by Harman, Gilbert Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1973), 189–94.Google Scholar He is critical of the view of memory described above.
10 I do not mean that the agent must believed that the k-th link (e**) is counterbalancing evidence for the k-1-th link (e*). He may not have the concept of counter-balancing evidence. What I mean is that he must use or reason from the evidence e** in such a way that he is entitled to disregard the relevant evidential implications of e*.