Knowledge and justification
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Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
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We are interested here in the nature of justification. Justification in this sense creates a chain of deductive inferences. Statements are justified by showing that they follow logically from other statements. But this creates a problem of what we call an infinite regress. Suppose statement Z is justified by inference from statement Y, and statement Y is justified by inference from statement X, and so forth. At what point will the process of justifying one statement by deriving it from another stop? Z is justified by Y. Y is justified by X. X is justified by W and so on, ad infinitum. Diagrammatically we might represent this situation by ... The arrows point in the direction of logical inference; but the justification goes the other way – Z is true because it follows logically from Y, and so on. One way we might get around this problem is to propose an alternative structure. Such as justification in a circle. ... Of course this does not seem any better. As we are going around in a circle every statement is justified by appeal to every other – but what if the whole structure is wrong? On the other hand, this alternative is seriously proposed in what is known as the coherence theory of truth, which we shall also examine later. If we reject the idea of justifying in a circle (and the coherence theory of truth), then we need to stop the infinite regress in some way. We need to appeal to some kind of proposition that does not require justification by appeal to other propositions. Such a proposition would be a self-evident truth. A self-evident truth is one that justifies itself.
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Contents of
Knowledge and justification
1 The distinction between knowledge and belief
2 Unsound, invalid, possible world and fallacy
3 Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
4 Belief and doubt
5 Believing that and knowing that
6 Knowledge and certainty - the tripartite definition of knowledge
7 True, justified belief
8 Plato: The Theaetetus
9 Plato: Forms
10 The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
11 Global scepticism
12 The Argument from Authority
13 Valid argument, inference and justification
14 Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
15 Sense experience, empiricism
16 The dialectic method, thesis and antithesis
17 Rationalism and empiricism; the Discourse on the Method
18 The Cogito, Reason and Rational Insight
19 Bertrand Russell, Acquaintance
20 Universals, Forms
21 Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
22 The evil genius argument
23 Existentialism
24 Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling - the Absurd
25 Foundation for Knowledge
26 Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology and Metaphysics
27 Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
28 Innate Ideas
29 The a priori
30 Truth by convention, Hume and the Method of Doubt
31 Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
32 Hume and the definition of belief
33 Truth as a logical operator on sentences
34 The correspondence theory of truth
35 Wittgenstein: On Certainty
36 Wittgenstein and the coherence theory of truth
37 William James and Pragmatism
38 W.V.O. Quine, pragmatism and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism
39 Postivism and pragmatism
40 Pragmatism and utilitarianism
41 Pragmatism and religiion
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