But How Do You Know That?

Jonah Bossewitch

PHI 313

Professor Gideon Rosen

January 11, 1994

"Prima facie, there seem to be only four basic possibilities with regard to the eventual outcome of this potential regress of epistemic justification: (i) the regress might terminate with beliefs for which no justification of any kind is available, even though they were offered earlier as justifying premises; (ii) the regress might proceed infinitely backwards with ever more new premise- beliefs being introduced and then themselves requiring justification; (iii) the regress might circle back upon itself, so that at some point beliefs which appeared earlier in the sequence of justifying arguments are appealed to again as premises; (iv) the regress might terminate because beliefs are reached which are justified... but whose justification does not depend inferentially on other empirical beliefs and thus does not raise any further issue of justification with respect to such beliefs.

A Critique of Foundationalism, Laurence Bonjour

In order to rationally confront the issue of the justification of our beliefs, we must first subject the concept of a belief to rigorous analysis. It is meaningless to talk about a belief being justified without a clear definition of belief. Once we have a common, acceptable definition of belief care must be taken not to confuse the issue of the origin of beliefs and the justification of beliefs. A theory of justification is not intended to explain where our beliefs come from, but rather, how to treat our beliefs after we have acquired them. Even an intellectually responsible individual can not be held responsible for false initial beliefs. What we are looking for is a systematic way of filtering out the justified beliefs from the pool of beliefs whose justification is not yet determined. Without a coherent theory of justification, the most extreme skeptic imaginable is correct, and we have no right to believe that

hat any of our beliefs are justified.

One of the trickiest aspects of defining beliefs is dealing with the subjective nature of beliefs. A proposition need not be true order for me to believe it is true. "It is quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking." (Meditations, Descartes) Essentially, a propositional belief is any though that I consider to be true. However, when defining philosophical terms it is important to evaluate whether or not they actually represent the world in a realistic manner. This definition of belief does not make explicit an implicit component of beliefs, namely that a thought can not occur outside of a context. People do not have thoughts in a vacuum. Beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, they are components of a network of beliefs that define the context of the belief. I do not believe that the soup is hot in any context. I believe that the soup is hot in the context of edible foods. However, I simultaneously believe that the soup is not hot in the context of supernovas. The assertion "X believes Y" is really shorthand for the assertion "X believes Y in the context C," where C is the set of background premises that define the domain of the belief. While it may seem like a contradiction for me to believe both that the soup is hot and that the soup in not hot, by limiting the belief to a context it is apparent that my beliefs are mutually consistent.

Returning to the question of "What makes belief X justified?", it is now clear that we are not asking a complete question. The question that we need to answer is "What makes belief X justified in the context C?" An epistemological theory that answers this question is still not complete since we still must justify the context C. However, it is important to separate the questions "What makes belief X justified in the context C?" from the question "What justifies the context C?"

A useful analogy that sharpens up this idea the difference between a valid conclusion and a true conclusion. A proposition is logically valid if and only if it can be derived deductively from the premises. However, a valid conclusion is not necessarily a true conclusion since the premises of the deduction may have been false. A valid conclusion based on false premises is not true with respect the set of meta-premises that refute the original premises of the argument. However, in a sense, the valid proposition is true with respect to the premises. For example, the assertion "parallel lines never meet" is true in the context of Euclidean geometry but false in the context of non-Euclidean geometry. There are two levels of justification that need to be dealt with when justifying a belief. Justifying the belief within the context of the belief, and justifying the context of the belief with respect to all of the other contexts.

It is also important to consider the relationship between the premises and the conclusions in a deductive argument. An invalid conclusion can mean one of two things: 1) The conclusion is invalid with respect to the premises, or 2) The premises are invalid with respect to the conclusion. This symmetry must be preserved in any theory of justification if we ever hope to justify inferences of any type. The co-justification of beliefs (that is two beliefs supporting each other) is an issue that we must return to. But it is important to note the dynamic interplay between the premises and the conclusions. For example, when discussing scientific theories, if the current theory is well enough justified (whatever that means), evidence that is inconsistent with the theory is considered wrong. At that point, it is the scientist's job to figure out why his data is inconsistent with the theory. However, at a certain point the theory no longer invalidates the data, the data invalidates the theory. A complete theory of justification must explain the seemingly paradoxical relationship between premises and conclusions.

It is important to construct a conceptual framework of beliefs before attempting to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the justification of a belief. Much of the confusion concerning justification is a result of operating without a clear idea of what needs to be justified. The four alternative methods of justification specified above can only be applied to an explicit notion of beliefs. A discussion of the nature up to this point must preface any discussion involving justification.

The problem of justification goes as follows. Given that a have the belief B, what justifies believing in it as opposed to a contradictory belief C. A typical response might be that you are justified in believing reasonable beliefs, and all that we need to determine is what constitutes something as reasonable. But the problem of justification foes deeper than that. For if I give you a reason for my belief in B, that reason itself is a belief of mine, B'. A theory of epistemology must handle the fact that my beliefs are based on other beliefs, and that those prior beliefs must also be justified. Clearly, my justification for belief B must take the form of one of the schemas depicted by Bonjour in the quote above. Either my beliefs are based on basic foundation beliefs, are based on an infinite chain of beliefs, or are based on each other. If my beliefs are justified by foundational beliefs, those basic beliefs must either be justifiable by a means other than being based on a belief (self-justifiable) or unjustifiable. If justification can not be put on solid ground, then the skeptical threat that all thinkers must face is devastating. If we can not formulate what makes beliefs justified, then they are nothing more than arbitrary propositions that we convince ourselves actually mean something. Without a coherent theory of justification, we have no right to believe one belief over another and the ramifications of that form of skepticism are unacceptable.

Returning to the paradigm example of pure reasoning, deductive logic makes this skeptical threat all too real. A conclusion that is valid may have been based on false premises. It seems ludicrous to suggest that a conclusion based on false premises is true. In other words, a valid conclusion is no truer than its premises, and likewise justification is conferred from arguments to premises. Can an unjustified premise ever yield a valid justified conclusion?

"If knowledge or justified belief arises through inference, it requires belief of at least one premise, and that belief can produce knowledge or justified belief of a proposition inferred from the premise only if the premise belief is an instance of knowledge or at least justified."

Contemporary Foundationalism, Robert Audi

In the passage above, Audi asserts that an unjustified premise can never yield a justified proposition. In doing so he refutes the possibility of a justifiable circular system, or a justifiable system based on unjustifiable premises. Essentially, Audi claims that our system of beliefs is composed of beliefs that are justifiable in one of two ways. Belief B is justified if and only if (1) B is a basic belief produced by a reliable process that is belief independent, or (2) B is derived from justified beliefs by a conditionally reliable process. The focus of our efforts must then become stipulating the conditions that make a belief a basic belief. Such a belief must in some sense be self-justifying since it can not be derived from other justified beliefs. While this form of absolute foundationalism may at first sound attractive, the problem of determining what constitutes a basic belief is one that many philosophers consider intractable.

Bonjour argues that "if inference from [basic beliefs] is to be the sole basis for the justification of other empirical beliefs, then that feature, whatever it may be, in virtue of which a belief qualifies as basic must also constitute a good reason for thinking that the belief is true." This point is well taken, and Audi is left having to explain what he means by a basic belief. Any attempt to elucidate the meaning of basic must take the following form. "Belief B has the property Q therefore it is a basic belief." However, this assertion itself must be justified and it is difficult to see how a vicious infinite regress is avoided.

Some of the confusion in this matter is a result of a neglecting to be clear as to what we are trying to justify. Just as it is meaningless to talk about having a belief B without specifying a context, so to is it meaningless to discuss justifying a belief without specifying a context. The product of such an attempt is similar to Badger's Holistic Coherentism, but at the same time retains some of the flavor of a Foundationalist approach. By introducing the context of the belief, justification becomes conditional as opposed to absolute.

I believe that nothing can go faster than the speed of light given that relativistic mechanics is correct. While it may be impossible to justify the belief "nothing can go faster than the speed of light," the belief "if the theory of reactivity is correct, then nothing can go faster than the speed of light" is more easily justified. This approach combines aspects of Foundationalism and Coherentism by maintaining that within a particular context, justification must come to a non-circular end. However , the fundamental beliefs do not possess a special feature which allows them to be non-inferentially justified. The regress of justification is terminated by beliefs that have no justification themselves, however, the skeptic has not yet won.

While a belief that is justified by another unjustified belief my be logically unjustifiable itself, we need to look no further than mathematics itself to save us from the embarrassing possibility that none of our beliefs are justified. In mathematics the domain of the problem needs to be explicitly defined in order for any question to have meaning. Do parallel lines ever cross? Well, do you mean in Euclidian space or in non-Euclidean space. If we consider mathematical proof to be a prototypical model of ideal justification then it is possible to refute a skeptic who claims that none of our beliefs are justified. The way that mathematicians escape the skeptical threat that their beliefs are unjustified is by defining the basic beliefs, and conditionally justifying any further beliefs. To a mathematician this relationship can be expressed by the conditional statement "if A then B". Whenever this relationship holds between two assertions B is true whenever A is true.

Applying this problem of justifying beliefs, we simply need to make explicit the implicit conditional statement that underlies all beliefs. We can recast the assertion "belief B is justified in context C" to the form "if we limit our domain to context C then belief B is justified." By defining our basic beliefs instead of justifying we no playing an analytical word game that circumvents the epistemological problem instead of addressing it. On the contrary, we are slicing the problem up in the way it should have been viewed from the start. Justifying a belief within a context, and justifying a context are two types of justification that need to be differentiated. As long as we make explicit the beliefs we consider defined and not justified, a valid belief in that context will be a justifiable belief in that context.

It is not clear how this account of justification can be placed in one of the categories of schemas of justification outlined by Bonjour. In a sense this account is like possibility one since we are justifying our beliefs in a context by using foundational beliefs that are true by definition (the acceptable domain of the context). At the same time this account could also be considered one that limits the infinite regress by defining an arbitrary point in which to halt the regress. In one respect it is more like the latter account since our belief of B in the context C is itself a belief that exists in context C'. However, by defining the context explicitly enables us to avoid the infinite chain of justification. Although it is always possible question the belief in entire contextual frameworks within the context C' which is almost exactly what we are doing in epistemology. Questioning the justifications of the contexts themselves is not something that is usually done within contexts. It is

we might choose to use the word justification to refer to the validity of a belief in a context or the validity of context (infinite regress)

To illustrate the fact that beliefs whose reasons are unjustified can in a sense, justification is confered conditional justification in not we can look at to mathematics for a solution

I am not attempting to justify a belief B in general, but with respect to some other beliefs. Justification of this sort is merely checking for the validity of a belief in a particular framework of beliefs. To put it another way, we must distingiugh between justification of a conditional belief from the justification of a belief. For instance, when analyzing the assertion "if A then B" I am justified in believing that B is true whenever A is true.

"The central thesis of epistemilogical foundationalism,... is the claim that certain empirical beliefs possess a degree of epistemic justification or warrant which does not depend, inferentially or otherwise, on the justification of other empirical beliefs, but is instead somehow immediate or intrinsic."

A Critique of Foundationalism, Laurence Bonjour