Justification

Term Paper # 96065

Philosophy > Epistemology
Philosophy > Logic
Philosophy > Metaphysics

Justification

An analysis of Keith Lehrer and Thomas Paxson's understanding of justification and Laurence Bonjour's criticism of foundationalism.

1,018 words () | 2 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This essay describes Keith Lehrer and Thomas Paxson's understanding of justification as it relates to epistemic knowledge. The paper uses Lehrer and Paxon's article "Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief," as a basis of the explanation. The paper also discusses and explains Laurence Bonjour's criticism of foundationalism.

From the Paper:

"Bonjour makes two fundamental criticisms of foundationalism which work together to attack foundationalism. The first problem for foundationalism is a contradiction between accepting both (1) and (2) as a priori claims. Bonjour states that B is "ex hypothesi, and empirical belief, and it is hard to see how a particular empirical belief could be justified on a purely a purely a priori basis." This argument means that the foundationalists can have one of the two premises justified before the use of empirical evidence but not both. Therefore, the foundationalists must rely on empirical knowledge to justify basic beliefs therefore there are no truly basic beliefs."
"The second argument Bonjour makes is that in order for a belief to be justified the subject must have justification, not just in the abstract, but also have cognitive access to the justification employed in support of the belief. The reason for this claim is that a subject could not be held epistemically responsible for a belief if they did not have cognitive access to the justification for holding that belief, because without that access the subject has no reason for thinking said belief to be true."

Sample of Sources Used:

Bonjour, Laurence "The Structure of Empirical Knowledge"
Lehrer and Paxon, Keith and Thomas. "Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief," The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 66, No. 8 (Apr., 1969)