Epistemic justification

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In the epistemological debate, the term epistemic justification denotes a condition that a belief must meet in order to be knowledge . Instead of epistemic justification, one often speaks of the justification of convictions.

Justification as a condition for knowledge is introduced for the first time in Plato's Theaetetus , where knowledge is analyzed as true conviction that is connected with justification. This model has long been the most prominent knowledge analysis. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that approaches emerged that did not consider justification to be necessary for knowledge.

Epistemic justifications are to be distinguished from other justifications in which reasons of truth are not in the foreground - such as B. moral or prudence reasons. A conviction can be justified and epistemically unjustified for other reasons at the same time (such as the conviction of the success of an important but risky undertaking).

What are justifications?

A justification is generally a relationship between something that justifies (“justifier”) and something that is justified. As carriers of justifications, convictions, opinions (in the sense of the English "belief", hold for-true) and propositions come into question, whereby in the epistemology of the present, convictions are given preference. On the other hand, the question of what can be used as a justification is controversial. Many philosophers believe that beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs (e.g. Otto Neurath , Donald Davidson ). Since beliefs have a propositional content, what justifies the belief must also have a propositional content. On the other hand, some philosophers ( Moritz Schlick , John McDowell ) are of the opinion that something that is not itself a belief can justify beliefs. Often reference is made to perceptual experiences that should not have any propositional content. Whether such non-propositional perceptual experiences actually exist and to what extent they should be able to justify propositional convictions at all is controversial.

Justifications always have a normative component. When we say that a belief is justified, we are not only making a statement about its nature, but also about how it should be from an epistemological point of view. A characteristic of justifications is also their degree of degree; they can provide weaker or stronger reasons for the truth of a belief. Additional reasons can increase the level of justification for a belief.

There are two models to explain when a belief is justified. According to the model of epistemological duties (e.g. René Descartes , John Locke ), a person's belief is justified if it does not violate any of the epistemic duties. This understanding of justification is also known as the deontological conception, which takes into account the normative character of the epistemic concepts. According to the model of instrumental rationality (e.g. Laurence Bonjour ), on the other hand, a person's conviction is justified if it is based on methods or produced by processes that reliably lead to the epistemic goal of truth.

Beliefs

We speak of beliefs in two ways. On the one hand, we denote as conviction what someone is convinced of, i.e. the content of the conviction or the corresponding proposition, what is believed to be true. On the other hand, we also call the specific attitude to a proposition a belief, i.e. the belief that it is true. We then differentiate this attitude from other spiritual attitudes that one can have towards propositions such as beliefs, wishes, fears, hopes, etc.

Different beliefs can differ from one another in terms of their content and strength. In terms of content, beliefs can differ extensionally and intensively . The strength of a belief can be expressed in terms of the degree of subjective probability .

Justification and truth

The term “justification” must be distinguished from the concept of truth . Justifications do not guarantee the truth of a belief, but a good justification should at least represent a “good means” on the way to truth.

Furthermore, the term “justification” is generally differentiated from the concept of truth by pointing out the fundamental person and time relativity of justifications. Whether a belief is justified does not depend solely on its content, but on the reasons that the respective person has for his belief. These reasons can also change over time. So the conviction that the earth is flat was perhaps justified in earlier times, but never true.

Structures of justification

The assumption that beliefs must always be justified by reasons results in a trilemma that can be traced back to Aristotle and is prominently represented by the Sextus Empiricus ( Agrippa trilemma ). In German-speaking philosophy it became known as the Münchhausen Trilemma . Accordingly, every attempt at justification leads (a) either to an infinite regress of reasons or (b) to an arbitrary termination of the statement of reasons or (c) to a circle of reasons. This trilemma arises, however, only if one assumes that every justification requires reasons which in turn can only be justified by reasons. This is attempted by various justification theories such as B. to avoid fundamentalism, coherentism and contextualism.

fundamentalism

The fundamentalism is by far the oldest and probably still the most widespread justification strategy. He formally distinguishes between two types of beliefs: basic and non-basic beliefs. For fundamentalism, the source of all justification lies in basic beliefs. They are justified without their justification depending on other beliefs. All non-basic beliefs are justified only insofar as they can be derived from basic beliefs in a shorter or longer way.

According to Grundmann, fundamentalist positions can be differentiated according to which beliefs they consider basic (a), how stable they are (b) and how they are justified for them (c):

  • (a) For rationalist fundamentalists (e.g. Plato, Descartes) such convictions are fundamental , which are based on an a priori insight into necessary rational truths. In contrast, empiricist fundamentalists (e.g. British empiricism, Russell , Ayer , Schlick ) see sensory perception as the basis of basic beliefs.
  • (b) Strong fundamentalists such as Descartes claim that basic beliefs are rationally incontestable, while for moderate fundamentalists these do not require any further justification by other beliefs, but are fundamentally contestable.
  • (c) As an instance of justification, psychological fundamentalists apply the absolute certainty of the believer in the truth of his belief. For the externalist fundamentalist , the reliability of conviction-building processes is the decisive justification instance, while for the internalist fundamentalist the basic conviction is justified by itself, its immediate obviousness.

Coherentism

The coherentism originated in the 20th century. In response to fundamentalism. He was u. a. Represented by Otto Neurath, Brand Blanshard , WVO Quine , Wilfrid Sellars , Keith Lehrer , Donald Davidson and the early Laurence BonJour.

There are no basic beliefs for coherentism, since a belief cannot be justified on its own. The justification of each individual belief, on the other hand, depends on the global structure of the relationships in a whole system of beliefs. The more closely and systematically the beliefs are related to one another in such a system, the greater the degree of justification for this system and all of its elements. In terms of coherentism, this means that every conviction can be revised if it improves the overall coherence of the system.

A coherent system includes the logical consistency of the individual beliefs and their relationships to one another, which can be of very different types (e.g. conclusive, inductive, probabilistic and explanatory relationships).

Contextualism

The contextualism can be considered a form of fundamentalism. Like him, he distinguishes between basic and non-basic beliefs. What is a basic conviction, however, according to contextualism, is not fixed once and for all, but depends on the context of the conversation or the investigation. The beliefs presumed to be undisputed in a conversation situation are accordingly (provisionally) justified until one of the participants in the conversation gives plausible reasons against the truth of this belief. Undisputed statements enjoy a so-called “default status”; they are considered epistemologically acceptable as long as nothing speaks against them.

Internalism-Externalism Debate

One of the most important epistemological debates since the 1980s revolves around the so-called " internalism-externalism problem ". This debate deals with the ontological status of reasons (1) and the relationship of the knowledge subject to them (2).

With regard to the ontological status of reasons (1), internalist theories argue that reasons depend solely on the mental perspective of the cognitive subject. The reasons are therefore purely mental states (beliefs, perceptual experiences, memories, sensations, etc.). Externalistic theories, on the other hand, also consider objective facts independent of the subjective perspective to be relevant for justification.

On the question of the relationship between the subject of knowledge and its reasons (2), internalist theories claim that the reasons for knowledge must be cognitively known to the subject in order to be able to be considered reasons; for externalist theories, on the other hand, the mere existence of the ground is sufficient.

See also

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ in the following identical with "epistemic justification"
  2. ^ Otto Neurath: Protocol sentences . In: Knowledge 3 (1932/33), pp. 206ff.
  3. ^ Donald Davidson: A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge. In: Ernest LePore (Ed.): Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson 1986, pp. 307-319, here: 310.
  4. ^ Moritz Schlick: About the foundation of knowledge . In: ders .: Collected essays 1926–1936, Hildesheim 1969, pp. 290–310, here: 290ff.
  5. ^ John McDowell: Mind and World . Cambridge / MA 1994
  6. ↑ René Descartes: Meditations on the Basics of Philosophy. Meditationes de prima philosophia , Hamburg 1992, AT VII 70
  7. ↑ John Locke: attempt on human understanding , Hamburg 1981, vol. II, book IV, chap. XVII, 23, pp. 391f.
  8. ↑ Laurence Bonjour: The Structure of Empirical Knowledge , Cambridge (MA) 1985, p. 8
  9. ↑ Aristotle: Analytica Posteriora , 72b5 ff.
  10. ^ Sextus Empiricus: Plan of the Pyrrhonic Skepis , I, 164ff.
  11. ↑ Thomas Grundmann: Analytical Introduction to Epistemology , pp. 281–283
  12. ↑ Whereby Hegel and Bradley can be seen as forerunners (cf. Thomas Grundmann: Analytical Introduction to Epistemology , p. 309)
  13. ↑ Peter Baumann: Epistemology , p. 213