Empirical Justification

271 Pages·1986·4.794 MB·English

by  Paul K. Moser (auth.)

EMPIRICAL JUSTIFICA TlON
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh
KEITH LEHRER, University ofA rizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University
ALLAN GIBBARD, University ofM ichigan
ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University
ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME 34
PAUL K. MOSER
Department of Philosophy, Loyola University of Chicago
EMPIRICAL
JUSTIFICATION
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER/TOKYO
library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Moser, Paul K., 1957-
Empirical justification.
(Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. 34)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Justification (Theory of knowledge) 2. Empiricism.
3. Epistemics. 4. Rationalism. I. Title. II. Series.
BD212.M67 1985 121 85-24436
~~rl~;66~j~fs:JI~~3i~26-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-4526-5
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
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In all other countries, sold and distributed
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D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group.
All Rights Reserved.
© 1985 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1985
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
For Denise and Anna
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE U
CHAPTER I: JUSTIFICATION AND THE REGRESS
PROBLEM 1
1. Justification and Truth 5
2. Justification and Probability 9
3. Justification and Knowledge 21
4. The Epistemic Regress Problem 23
CHAPTER II: EPISTEMIC CONTEXTUALISM: JUSTIFICA-
TION VIA THE UNJUSTIFIED 29
1. Contextualism and Scientific Justification 30
2. Contextualism Without a Scientific Community 40
3. Contextualism and Skepticism 45
4. The Inadequacy of Contextualism 53
CHAPTER III: EPISTEMIC COHERENTISM: "CIRCLES"
OF JUSTIFICATION 59
1. Negative Coherentism 60
2. Positive Coherentism 72
2.1. Explanatory Coherentism 73
2.2. Coherentism and the Isolation Objection 84
2.3. Subjective Coherentism 97
3. The Inadequacy of Coherentism 102
CHAPTER IV. EPISTEMIC FOUNDATIONALISM (I):
INFINITE REGRESSES, EXTERNALISM,
AND RELIABILISM 107
1. Infinite Regresses of Justification 107
2. Episternic Foundationalism 116
2.1. Epistemic Ascent Arguments 119
2.2. Episternic Externalism 120
2.3. Internalism and Reliabilism 130
3. Concluding Remarks 138
viii T ABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER V: EPISTEMIC FOUNDATIONALISM (II):
EPISTEMIC INTUITIONISM 141
1. Intuitionism and Immediate Justification 143
1.1. Chisholm's Intuitionism 143
1.2. Lewis' Intuitionism 147
1.3. Infallibility and Indubitability 150
1.4. Justification via Intuitions 157
1.5. Objectless Intuitions 162
1.6. Apprehensions and Immediate Justification 173
2. Justifying Nonfoundational Observation Beliefs 187
2.1. Phenomenalist Deductivism 188
2.2. Critical Cognitivism 195
2.3. Explanatory Justification 198
3. General Summary and Conclusion 205
CHAPTER VI. EPILOGUE: THE EPISTEMIC AND THE
RATIONAL 211
1. Rational Conflicts 211
2. Three Kinds of Rationality 217
3. AII-Things-Considered Rationality 221
APPENDIX 239
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
INDEX OF NAMES 257
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 259
PREFACE
Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof.
Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it
does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion
of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of
justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains,
very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And
to that extent, at least, we should recognize a variety of notions of
justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of
Chapter VI.
This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of
justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a
seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called
empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent
contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and
varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following
chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence
and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions
about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack
thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question
of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda
tions will be given special attention. But in disagreement with the
growing majority of contemporary philosophers, I argue for the
indispensability of foundations, of a certain sort, in empirical knowl
edge. My argument constitutes Chapters I-V of what follows.
This book has been several years in the making, and owes much to
many colleagues, critics, and friends. Often the colleagues and critics
were also friends, and so much of the critical input was constructive and
friendly. Of such input I want to emphasize that there is none more
beneficial than which an author can receive. My sustained research on
theories of justification began several years ago with my doctoral
dissertation written at Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt my work on
justification benefited immensely from numerous discussions with
Jeffrey Tlumak, John Post, John Compton, Michael Hodges, Clement
IX
x PREFACE
Dore, and Lee Rowen. Jeffrey Tlumak deserves special thanks for his
consistent willingness to provide meticulous written comments on my
earlier essays on justified belief. His comments have had a favorable,
if sometimes indirect, influence on many arguments in the present book.
I am also grateful to the Vanderbilt University Special Awards Com
mittee for a full-time research grant extending from June 1982 to June
1983. With this support I was able, unencumbered by the cares of the
world, to conceive, and to begin to carry out, the program of this book.
Since 1983 my work on justification has benefited considerably from
numerous discussions with colleagues and graduate students at Loyola
University of Chicago, and from interaction with the participants in
Robert Audi's 1984 NEH Institute on Action Theory. (It was during
Audi's Institute that I drafted a version of Chapter VI of this book.) In
this connection I especially thank my Loyola colleagues, Harry Gensler
and Arnold Vandernat, and the NEH Institute contributors Robert
Audi, Alfred Mele, and Hector-Neri Castaneda. My philosophical
discussions with these philosophers have been consistently enjoyable
and profitable. I want also to thank Peter Klein and Robert Audi for
extensive written comments on the penultimate version of this book.
Their thoughtful comments prompted corrections, clarifications, and
improvements of other sorts at many points.
Finally, and perhaps most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Denise, for
providing daily encouragement and support during the difficult period of
research and writing. I would also thank my daughter, Anna, but being
only a few months old, she is not quite ready yet to appreciate the joys of
epistemology. Nonetheless, I dedicate this book to Denise and Anna.
A few sections of the book derive from material in the following
articles: 'Two Paradoxes of Rational Acceptance', Erkenntnis 23 (1985),
127-41; 'Whither Infinite Regresses of Justification?', The, Southern
Journal of Philosophy 23 (1985), 65-74; 'Justified Doubt Without
Certainty', The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65 (1984), 97-104; and
'On Negative Coherentism and Subjective Justification', The Southern
Journal of Philosophy 22 (1984), 83-90. I thank the editors for permis
sion to use parts of these articles.
CHAPTER I
JUSTIFICATION AND THE REGRESS PROBLEM
Belief without any justification is blind, or at least unreasonable. One
major value of justification is that it relates belief to some relevant end
in view. When the end is truth, and truth alone, epistemic justification is
all-important. But epistemic justification is not the only kind of justifica
tion. Consider prudential justification, for instance. Many of our beliefs
are prudentially justified because they are likely to have prudential
consequences, that is, because they probably play an important role in
bringing about what is in our best prudential interest. But many pruden
tially justified beliefs are obviously unlikely to be true. Consider, for
instance, the case of a person washed asea some 200 miles from the
nearest shore. This person, we may plausibly assume, has overwhelming
evidence indicating that he cannot swim to safety. But since it is prob
ably in this person's best prudential interest to believe that he can swim
to safety - for given that belief, he will continue to swim and might be
rescued - he is, presumably, prudentially justified in believing that he
can swim to safety. Clearly, if he had no such belief, he would probably
drown immediately, without even trying to reach safety. Thus, although
this person's overwhelming evidence indicates it is false that he can
swim to safety, he may nonetheless be prudentially justified in believing
that he can, because it is probably in his best prudential interest to
believe this.
Epistemic justification is significantly different from prudential justifi
cation. In one sense, epistemic justification is disinterested justification.
For the epistemic justification of a belief does not depend on a person's
desiring that belief to be true. And a beliefs being in one's best pruden
tial interest is never a sufficient condition for that beliefs being epistemi
cally justified. Furthermore, one is not epistemically justified in believing
a proposition that is unlikely to be true on one's evidence. Epistemic
justification, by definition, is the kind of justification appropriate to
knowledge. That is, it is the kind of justification characterizing true
beliefs which qualify as knowledge. (But I do not intend to suggest here
that justified true belief is sufficient for knowledge.) Let us, then, avoid
any confusion of prudential and epistemic justification. 1
1