The Structure of Justification

This collection of papers transcends two of the most widely misunderstood positions in philosophy - foundationalism and coherentism.

Robert Audi (Author)

9780521446129, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 October 1993

496 pages
22.8 x 15 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

"His grasp of modern (analytical) American epistemology is striking. ... This new book is a notable one by a noted philosopher." Canadian Philosophical Reviews

This collection of papers by one of the foremost philosophers in epistemology transcends two of the most widely misunderstood positions in philosophy - foundationalism and coherentism. Audi proposes a distinctively moderate, internalist foundationalism that incorporates some of the virtues of both coherentism and reliabilism. He develops important distinctions between positive and negative epistemic dependence, substantively and conceptually naturalistic theories, dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe, episodically and structurally inferential beliefs, first and second order internalism, and rebutting as opposed to refuting scepticism. These contrasts are applied not only to rational belief, but to rational action and the rationality of desires and intentions. The overall position is a pluralist, moderately rationalistic, internalist theory of justification and a partly externalist conception of knowledge. However, by virtue of offering a theory of rationality as well as an account of knowledge and justified belief, it will interest philosophers of ethics, science, and the social sciences and teachers and students of epistemology.

Overview
Part I. The Foundationalism-Coherentism Controversy: 1. Psychological foundationalism
2. Axiological foundationalism
3. Foundationalism, epistemic dependence, and defeasibility
4. The foundationalism-coherentism controversy: hardened stereotypes and overlapping theories
Part II. Knowledge and Justification: 5. the limits of self-knowledge
6. defeated knowledge, reliability, and justification
7. The causal structure of indirect justification
8. Belief, reason, and inference
9. Structural justification
Part III. Epistemic Principles and Skepticism: 10. Justification, truth and reliability
11. Causalist internalism
12. The old skepticism, the new foundationalism, and naturalized epistemology
Part IV. Rationality: 13. An epistemic conception of rationality
14. Rationalization and rationality
15. The architecture of reason.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]