Justification is some positive epistemic status that a proposition or a belief can have which makes them epistemically appropriate. It can be understood in two different ways: the epistemic status ofhaving justification
for believing or being justified in believing a proposition p, and justifying one’s belief that p. The latter involves one’s doing something to show that p, or to show that one’s belief is justified, or exhibit one’s justification. That is the activity of defending or giving reasons. Nonetheless, someone might be justified in believing that there is a chair in front of her when she sees the chair even though she has done nothing to show that there is a chair or to show that she is justified in believing so. The former is a state or condition the subject is in, not anything one does or any upshot thereof.
That refers to the property of being justified. (See, for instance, Alston (1985, 58; 1989a, chs. 1, 2, 3, 6); Audi (1993, 1993; 2011, 2); Pryor (2000, 521; 2005, 193-195); Steup (1996, 10).)3 The relevant form of justification for our purposes is having justification or being justified in believing.
There is another important distinction about justification. Someone might have justification for believing that there is a chair in front of her because she sees the object even though she does not believe anything about the chair. In addition, when she believes that there is a chair in front of her, she does not only have justification for her belief but moreover she could be justified in believing so. This example exhibits two different epistemic statuses of justification. The first one has to do with the justification of a proposition, that is, propositional justification; and the second has to do with the psychological state of believing — forming the belief itself —, i.e., doxastic justification. (For this distinction see Audi (2011, 2-3); Firth (1978a, 218-9; 1978b;1978c); Fumerton(2002, 206-7); Plantinga (1993, 95-ff, 183ff); Pryor (2005, 81-2).) Propositional justification is the epistemic status of having justification for believing a proposition. Having justification for believing is independent from one believing it or not. The justificatory property refers to the justification of a proposition: when a proposition is being justified. For instance, imagine a subject looking at a table but who does not form any belief about it. In these circumstances, the subject has propositional justification for believing that there is a table because she has
3Leite (2004) criticizes this distinction. He thinks that we cannot dissociate the activity of justifying from the fact of being justified.
some evidence that supports a potential belief about the table despite the fact that she does not believe it at the moment. Doxastic justification is the epistemic status of being justified in believing a proposition. It is a more demanding epistemic position than propositional justification because it implies not only that onehas justification for believing a proposition — that is, has evidence that supports a proposition —, but also that one believes the proposition based on adequate evidence. In sum, in the former case, the subject has justification for a proposition or the proposition is justified even though she does not form any belief about that. In the latter, the subject has justification for a belief or the belief is justified; she is justified in holding the belief.4 This difference could be also expressed regarding beliefs independently of the propositions distinguishing between the justifiability and the justifiedness of a belief. A belief could be justifiable (the subject could have the appropriate evidence for believing it) even though she does not believe it; and the belief is justified once she holds it on the right evidence (Lyons 2009, 22 and n. 3).
The kind of perceptual justification I will take into consideration in this thesis is doxastic justification, the epistemic and psychological state of believing. First of all, the amount of things we actually believe on the basis of the information provided by our senses is extremely little in relation to the amount of propositions we have justification for. Looking at a lawn, someone might be justified in believing that it has more than ten blades of grass per square foot, but also more than eleven, twelve, one hundred, and so on. The subject might also believe that there are fifteen blades of grass shorter than the largest one, or sixteen, or seventeen, and the like (Audi 2011, 3). We have an infinite amount of justification for believing propositions even if we actually believe an extremely limited number of them. Thus the relevant kind of justification for perceptual knowledge is doxastic justification, i.e., when the subject is justified in holding the belief she actually has on the basis of her senses. Propositional justification cannot explain perceptual
4Doxastic justification is what Feldman and Conee call “well-foundedness” (Conee and Feldman 2001a;Feldman and Conee 1985).
knowledge (neither knowledge in general) because knowledge requires belief, and propositional justification is justification of propositions, not of belief.
(See Comesa˜na(2010, 574).)
Theories of perceptual justification can be divided into internalist and externalist. Internalist theories maintain that the justification of percep-tual beliefs supervenes on the subject’s mental states; nothing outside the subject’s cognitive perspective can justify beliefs. Externalist theories hold, on the contrary, that the justification of perceptual beliefs depends at least partially on external elements to the subject’s mental states. The following quotations illustrate this contrast (see also Fumerton (2006, 54); Pollock (1999, 394); Pollock and Cruz (1999, 24)):
[I]t is internalism if and only if contingent factors external to the mind cannot make an epistemic difference.
[...]
Externalists characteristically hold that differences in justification can result from contingent non-mental differences, such as differing causal connections or reliability. (Conee and Feldman 2001b, 56) The internalist, on this view, maintains thatS’s knowing thatP, or having a justified belief that P, consists in S’s being in some inter-nal state. The exterinter-nalist, by contrast, is one who is committed to the view that knowledge and justified belief at least involve external states. (Fumerton 1995, 60-61)
There is an important contrast in the above quotations. Fumerton is interested in doxastic justification while Conee and Feldman refer to propo-sitional justification. However, the previous descriptions exhibit the same characteristics: a theory is internalist if and only if all the elements needed for the justification of a perceptual belief are internal to the subject’s men-tal life; and it is externalist if any external feature to the subject’s ken can produce any epistemic difference.
Internalist and externalist theories can be divided into weak and strong
versions.5 Weak internalism holds that a subject’s perceptual beliefB is jus-tified if and only if she has a perceptual mental state e which epistemically supports B, and S forms the belief B on the basis of e. Weak internal-ism is the thesis that the justification of the subject’s belief is necessarily and sufficiently justified by the subject’s mental states, or evidence. Justi-fication superveness on mental states. Let’s label this view as ‘Internalist Mentalism’.6 The most well known version of Internalist Mentalism has been formulated by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman (2004; 2001b) under the label of “Evidentialism” but it is also supported by Huemer (2001);
Pryor (2000, 2004), and apparently by Moore (1939), among others. This form of mentalism is internalist because it does not require any externalist condition (e.g., reliabilism) (see, e.g., Pryor 2000, 531-532). And it is a weak form of mentalism because it does not demand any other requirement for justification than the epistemic relation holding between the perceptual state and the belief.
Strong internalism holds that a subject’s perceptual beliefB is justified if and only if she has a perceptual mental statee which epistemically supports B,S forms the beliefB on the basis ofe, andS has access to some adequate epistemic relation holding betweene andB. That is, in addition to form her belief on the basis of this perceptual state, she must have some access — be aware (grasp, understand, comprehend, believe) — to the relation holding between the experience and the belief. This is a strong form of internalism because it requires the subject to be aware that the experience (adequately or epistemically) supports her belief.7 Call this view Accessibilism. Such
5For a similar and more extensive enumeration of the following theories see, e.g., Lyons 2009, 37-42.
6Internalist Mentalism is known as “Mentalism” or “Evidentialism” (Conee and Feld-man 2001b;Feldman and Conee 2004), “Consciousness Internalism” (Alston 1989a, 233),
“Simple Internalism” (Pryor 2001, 104), “Internal State Internalism” (Fumerton 1995, 2006), “Mentalist Internalism” (Steup 2008), and it is also a form of “Dogmatism” (Pryor 2000). For a different approach about mentalism as neither internal nor external see Bergmann(2006, ch. 3).
7Other labels of Accessibilism in the literature are, for example: “Access internalism”
(Pryor 2001;Fumerton 1995,2006), “Accessibility Internalism” (Alston 1989a, 233;Steup 2008), “Internalism” (Bergmann 2006). Notice that this is only a representative form of internalist accessibilism. Other forms of accessibilism could demand access to the
a view is defended by Chisholm (1989); BonJour (2003); Fumerton (1995, 2006); Steup (2004), among others.
The difference between these two groups can be seen inAudi(1998, 227), BonJour (2003, 24; 2010, 364), Conee and Feldman (2001a, 55), Fumerton (1995, 62), Plantinga (1993, 6) and Steup (2004, 404-405). Consider the following quotations:
Accessibility Internalism (AI), according to which only that to which the subject has cognitive access in some specially strong form can be a justifier.
[...]
Consciousness Internalism (CI), according to which only those states of affairs of which the subject is actually conscious or aware can serve to justify. (Alston 1989a, 233)
Simple internalism: Whether one is justified in believing p super-venes on facts which one is in a position to know about by reflection alone.
[...]
Access Internalism: One always has ‘special access’ to one’s justifi-catory status. (Pryor 2001, 104-5)
Externalist views also come in weak and strong versions. According to the weakest view, a subject’s beliefB is justified if and only if she has a per-ceptual mental statee which epistemically supportsB,S forms the beliefB on the basis ofe, and there is an appropriate external relation (e.g., reliable process, proper function) between e and B. Let’s call this view Externalist Mentalism. This perspective is a weak externalism because justification de-pends on internal features (the subject perceptual experiences) as well as on external features (an appropriate external relation connecting the belief to the experience). This view is the most common one about epistemic justifi-cation. Weak externalism is found in process reliabilism, which states that a
reliability of the perceptual process.
process is reliable “only if it generally produces beliefs that are true” (Gold-man 1979a, 98), or only if the probability of forming true beliefs is very high (Alston 1989b, 232), or “has a high ratio of true to false beliefs” (Lyons 2011, 306) (see Dokic and Engel 2002, 27-35 and Engel 2007c, 153 for an anal-ysis). Reliabilist externalist mentalist theories are held by Alston (1983, 1988, 1989a, 1993, 2002, 2005); Comesa˜na (2010); Dretske (1981, 2000);
Engel (2007c); Goldman (2008); Peacocke (1992b, 2004); Pollock (1986);
Pollock and Cruz (1999); White (2006). Another theory included in this group is proper functionalism. For instance, Bergmann (2006, 133) claims that a subject’s belief B is justified if and only if the cognitive faculties producingB from the perceptual experience e are (a) functioning properly, (b) truth-aimed and (c) reliable in the environments for which they were designed, and the subject does not takeB to be defeated. This account is held by Bergmann(2004b,a, 2006);Burge(1993, 2003,2010) andGraham (2011,2012).
Finally, there is strong externalism, a radical externalist view which maintains that a subject’s belief B is justified if and only if the belief B has been formed by an appropriate external process (e.g., reliable process, proper function). In other words, radical externalism denies that percep-tual experiences are necessary for justification. In the same conditions, the beliefB of a normal subject with a perceptual statee and the belief B of a blindsighted subject with no perceptual experience will be equally justified if they are produced by reliable processes. In this group I include all exter-nalist accounts which hold either that perceptual evidence does not always play a role in justification, or plays no role in justification. For instance, Plantiga’s proper functionalist account is formulated in terms of warrant:
having a warranted true belief is equivalent to knowledge. The subject’s beliefB is warranted if and only if the cognitive faculties producingB from the perceptual experience e are (a) functioning properly, (b) truth-aimed, and (c) reliable in the environments for which they were designed, and (d) the cognitive environment in which B is produced is sufficiently similar to the one for which the subject’s faculties were designed (Plantinga 1993,
19; see also Plantinga 1993, 46-7). Let’s label this approach Radical Ex-ternalism. Radical externalism is exemplified by some reliabilist theories (Goldman 1979b, 1986;Lyons 2005, 2008, 2009) and some forms of proper functionalism (Plantinga 1993, 2000).
These different groups of theories can be represented in the following table:
Theses of EJ weak strong
Internalism Internalist Mentalism Accessibilism
Externalism Externalist Mentalism Radical Externalism
The first three kinds of theories presented — i.e., accessibilism (strong internalism), internalist mentalism (weak internalism), and externalist men-talism (weak externalism), — are what Lyons (2009) calls ‘experientialist theories of perceptual justification’. Experientialism is the thesis that all justified beliefs have grounds, i.e., evidential justifiers. In the case of per-ceptual justification, the evidence is the perper-ceptual experience (Lyons 2009, 29-30). On the contrary, radical externalism (strong externalism) is a non-experientialist theory. It does not require perceptual evidence to account for perceptual justification.
The kind of perceptual justification I am interested in is one that is nec-essary for knowledge. There are some philosophers who argue that some forms of perceptual justification, namely internalists, are not required for knowledge (Greco 2005). And there are those who think that, although internalist justification is not necessary for knowledge, it is nevertheless an interesting concept (e.g., Engel (1992);Wolterstorff (2005)). (See Steup (2004, 405).) I will rather interpret each of the previous theories as accounts of perceptual justification which, according to their advocates, are neces-sary for perceptual knowledge. For instance, Steup (2004), who holds an internalist accessibilist account, states that “there are those — and I count
myself among them — who view internalist justification to be of epistemo-logical interest, perhaps not exclusively but certainly primarily, because it is a necessary condition of knowledge” (Steup 2004, 405). Other theorists defend similar views (BonJour 2003; Fumerton 2006). About internalist mentalism Pryor (2000, 520) points out “the dogmatist about perceptual knowledge adds the further claim that this justification you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge thatp is the case”. Feldman largely defends that internalist justification is necessary for knowledge (Conee and Feldman 2001a; Feldman and Conee 1985;Feldman 2005).
The cognitive penetration of perception represents a problem for all the previous theories of perceptual justification. Several philosophers seem to adopt the view that perceptual experiences are exclusively produced by an isolated and bottom-up perceptual process. For instance, Berm´udez (1995); Bergmann (2006, 2013); Brogaard (2013); BonJour (2003, 77-96);
Burge(1993, 2003); Dretske (2000); Huemer (2001, 99-103); Markie (2005, 2006, 2013); McDowell (1998); McGrath (2013) Peacocke (1992b, ch. 3);
Pryor(2000, 540-541);Steup(2004). From this perspective, perceptual jus-tification refers to the transition from experiences (produced by an isolated perceptual system) to perceptual beliefs based on the previous states. Expe-rientialist accounts of justification (internalism and weak externalism) based on the prior interpretation of the perceptual process do not seem to be able to deal with cognitive penetration. Because these theories do not take into consideration the etiology of perceptual experiences, they are not capable of distinguishing between good and bad cases of cognitive penetration. The subject will be equally justified in good and bad cases of cognitive penetra-tion. Therefore, these theories do not account for the kind of justification necessary for perceptual knowledge.
Externalist theories of perceptual justification (externalist mentalism and radical externalism) are also undermined by cognitive penetration. Cer-tain cognitive influences in, e.g., perceptual learning, might increase the reliability of the visual system (Kellman and Garrigan 2009; Lyons 2011,
300) but others might also deteriorate its accuracy (see, e.g., Mednick et al.
2005).
Although cognitive penetration constitutes a problem for both external-ist mentalism and radical externalism, it is possible to reformulate them in such a way that they can deal with the phenomenon. For example, some weak externalists argue that the reliable or proper functionalist justifica-tory process does not begin in the perceptual experience but also includes its etiology. Thus, justification is a process which extends from the per-ceptual organ though the perper-ceptual experience to the belief. A corrupted perceptual experience will involve the failure of the justificatory process.
Similarly, the strong externalist may argue that the justificatory process goes from the organ to the perceptual belief. If cognitive penetration influ-ences the reliability of the system the belief produced will not be justified.
In sum, the consequences of cognitive penetration on different theories of perceptual justification will be briefly examined in the last chapter. Al-though most theories of epistemic justification are threatened by cognitive penetration, there seem to be two groups capable of providing an account of justification which can deal with cognitive penetrability: externalist men-talism and radical externalism. Nevertheless, I will not provide any positive theory of perceptual justification.
Let’s present next the structure of this thesis.