Modest infinitism

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 537-562

  Fantl, Jeremy ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 44949148422     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2003.10716554     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. W. Alston, 'Concepts of Epistemic Justification,' in P.K. Moser, ed., Empirical Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1986), 25
2. F. Dretske, 'The Pragmatic Dimension of Knowledge,' in Perception, Knowledge, and Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000), 49
3. R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1966), 28
4. A. Goldman, 'What is Justified Belief?' in G.S. Pappas, ed., Justification and Knowledge (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1979), 21
5. See, for example, E. Sosa, 'We have found a surprising kinship between coherentism and substantive foundationalism, both of which turn out to be varieties of a deeper foundationalism' ('Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,' in M. Steup, ed., Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue [Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001]), 180;
6. R. Chisholm, 'Many coherent theorists seem to believe . that they can develop a nonfoundational coherence theory of epistemic justification - even though no one has ever shown just how this might be done' (Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed. [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1989], 88);
7. L. Bonjour, 'Weak foundationalism thus represents a kind of hybrid between strong foundationalism and the coherence views discussed earlier' ('Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?' in P.K. Moser, ed., 100).
8. L. Bonjour, 'The Dialectic of Foundationalism and Coherentism,' in J. Greco and E. Sosa, eds., The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology (Malden, MA: Blackwell 1999), 123
9. This from Bonjour: 'If a given putative knower is himself to be epistemically responsible in accepting beliefs in virtue of their meeting the standards of a given epistemological account, then it seems to follow that an appropriate metajustification of those standards must, in principle at least, be available to him' (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985], 10). To the extent one agrees with Bonjour, one cannot be what I am calling a metajustificatory foundationalist. Metajustificatory foundationalists hold that your foundations require no further reasons. To require that the metajustification (in Bonjour's sense) be available to you is to require that you have reasons available to support the foundations. This is just to deny metajustificatory foundationalism.
10. Goldman accepted defeater conditions as early as 1979 and reaffirmed them in 1986. He says, 'S's believing p at t is justified if and only if . this permission is not undermined by S's cognitive state at t' (Epistemology and Cognition [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1986], 63).
11. Robert Nozick says, 'while it would be too strong to require the belief [that the tracking conditions are satisfied] in order for the person to know . perhaps it is appropriate to require that he not believe the negations of [the tracking conditions]' (R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981], 196).
12. Alvin Plantinga makes notorious use of defeater conditions. See, for example, A. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), 40-2.
13. Thomas Senor notes that 'any plausible theory of justification will have to include some no-defeater clause' ('The Prima/Ultima Facie Justification Distinction in Epistemology,' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 [1996] 551-66, at 558).
14. L. Carroll, 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,' Mind 104 (1995) 691-3
15. See E. Sosa, 'The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence Versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge,' in M. Steup, ed., 199. Sosa seems to be talking about a change (for the better) in kind of knowledge, whereas my view is that the change is a matter of degree, not of kind. How great a difference this ultimately amounts to, I leave up to the reader. Whether Sosa ultimately should be categorized as an infinitist, I similarly leave up to the reader.
16. J. Post, 'Infinite Regresses of Justification and Explanation,' Philosophical Studies 38 (1980) 31-52
17. P. Klein, 'Why Not Infinitism?' in R. Cobb-Stevens, ed., The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5: Epistemology (Boston: Philosophy Documentation Center 2000), 203
18. See R. Rudner, 'The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments,' Philosophy of Science 20 (1953) 1-6,
19. D. Owens, Reason Without Freedom: The Problem of Epistemic Normativity (London: Routledge 2000), esp. 26 for arguments to this effect.
20. P. Klein, 'Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons,' Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology (1999), 297-326, at 298-9
21. B. Williams, 'Persons, Character, and Morality,' in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981), 18
22. See A. Plantinga, 'The Prospects for Natural Theology,' Philosophical Perspectives 5: Philosophy of Religion (1991) 287-315, at 311 for a similar view about the justification for belief in other minds.