Externalist Justification Without Reliability

Bergmann, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2004.00019.x

Cited by 21 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(30 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is specifically those who hold that we are entitled to the outputs of particular systems who are committed to this view. Others, for exampleBergmann (2004) who maintain that a malfunction in any process which contributes to the production of the belief will be able to avoid this prediction. This is because the belief upon which Jack bases his interpretation resulted from a defective belief formation procedure.22 Markie (2013) claims that perceptual seemings themselves can be rationally assessable.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Etiology, understanding, and testimonial belief

Peet¹

2016

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

background states are cases of cognitive penetration. If one's fear of spiders causes one to look in the corner, and one happens to see a spider, then ones experience of the spider is caused, in part, by one's fear of spiders. This is not a case of cognitive penetration. If one's fear of spiders causes one to see a piece of wire as a spider then this is a case of cognitive penetration. Roughly, one's experience is cognitively penetrated by a mental state m if another agent possessing the same perceptual faculties attending to the same stimuli from the same perspective, but lacking m, would have a perceptual experience with a different content 4 . For example, an agent in Jill's position who did not already believe that Jack was angry would not experience him as appearing angry 5 . Not all views of perceptual justification are able to easily accommodate the notion that an experience's justificational status can be downgraded by its etiology. For example, immediate justification views of perception hold that when it perceptually seems to us that p we are by default justified in forming a belief that p (assuming we possess no defeaters). That is, perceptual seemings themselves provide immediate (defeasible) justification. In ANGRY-LOOKING JACK it perceptually seems to Jill that Jack is angry, and she possesses no defeaters. Thus, according to immediate justification views of perception Jill is justified in believing that Jack is angry. If Jill's perceptual experience genuinely is unable to justify her belief that Jack is angry, then immediate justification views of perception must be rejected. Rather than simply rest her argument on intuitive verdicts about cases such as ANGRY-LOOKINGJACK Siegel provides two arguments for the claim that Jill's belief is unjustified. These arguments ultimately serve to hinder attempts to deny the intuitive verdict that Jill's belief is unjustified. Siegel (2012) argues that Jill's belief is circular. Jill's belief that Jack is angry causes her experience of Jack as angry. Jill then takes this perceptual experience to support her belief that Jack is angry.Siegel compares this to a gossip circle: GOSSIP CIRCLE: In a gossip circle, Jill tells Jack that p, Jack believes her but quickly forgets that she's the source of his belief, then shortly afterwards Jack tells Jill that p. It seems silly for Jill to take Jack's report that p as providing much if any additional support not matter much here, as I will be arguing that a parallel problem arises in the case of linguistic understanding as part of normal interpretation.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Etiology, understanding, and testimonial belief

Peet¹

2016

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…21 21 The solution presented in the text is inspired by Sosa (1993). Other solutions that don't posit ambiguity and do not give the game away to the internalists include Bergmann (2004) (although Bergmann does abandon reliabilism) and Majors and Sawyer (2005). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%