Recapitulation

• Most existing theories of knowledge face fatal objections.

• Doxastic theories (both foundationalist and coherence) fail because they cannot accommodate perception and memory.

• Perception and memory produce beliefs that are sometimes justified and sometimes not, but justification is not solely a function of other beliefs.

• Therefore, justifiability depends on more than doxastic states, implying the true epistemological theory must be nondoxastic.

• Nondoxastic theories can be either internalist or externalist.

• A sketch of an internalist nondoxastic theory—direct realism—has been presented, which the book aims to defend.

• The defense of direct realism involves arguing against externalist theories.

• If all externalist theories are rejected, only internalist nondoxastic theories remain, with direct realism seen as most plausible.

• Premier externalist theories include versions of probabilism and process reliabilism, both of which fail for specific reasons.

• Despite these failures, it remains possible that another form of externalism might succeed, so a more general argument against externalism is required.

• All discussed theories suffer from a common objection: failure to provide illuminating general accounts of epistemic justification.

• Theories start with simple, intuitive ideas but become complicated and convoluted to address objections.

• These complex criteria fail to explain why such a concept of epistemic justification should interest us.

• Foundations theories and direct realism have been accused of offering ad hoc lists of epistemic rules justified only because they align with pre-existing intuitions about justified beliefs.

• These theories provide no principled account from which their rules can be derived.

• Similar objections apply to all other discussed theories; their final versions are too complicated to explain what epistemic justification really is.

• To clarify this, a general account of epistemic justification is needed.

• This chapter aims to provide such a general account.

• With a better understanding of epistemic justification, all externalist theories can be dismissed for deep reasons related to the nature of epistemic justification.

• These considerations also require rejecting many internalist theories, including most coherence theories.

• Ultimately, the goal is to offer a simple and explanatory theory of justification.

• The proposed general account will be naturalistic, integrating epistemic justification into a naturalistic view of humans as biological machines.

Epistemic Norms

• When we ask whether a belief is justified, we want to know if it is all right to believe it.

• Justification concerns epistemic permissibility, emphasizing its normative character.

• The normative nature of epistemic justification is well-recognized and connected with the “ethics of belief”.

• Philosophers like Roderick Chisholm have stressed the normative character of epistemic terms.

• Some philosophers analyze epistemic justification in terms of maximizing epistemic values.

• The concept of epistemic justification here focuses on the question: “When is it permissible (epistemologically) to believe P?“

• Norms are general descriptions of when normative judgments are correct.

• Epistemic norms describe when it is epistemically permissible to hold beliefs.

• A belief is justified if and only if licensed by correct epistemic norms.

• We assess justification based on the cognizer’s reasons for holding the belief.

• Fundamental epistemic judgments pertain to reasoning, broadly construed as required by direct realism.

• Epistemic norms govern right reasoning and guide belief formation.

• The procedural concept of epistemic justification explains justification by explaining the nature and origin of epistemic norms governing reasoning.

• Other concepts of epistemic justification might exist, but the procedural concept is the focus here and in traditional epistemology.

• Recent epistemology has focused on the content of epistemic norms, but not much on their nature and source.

• Epistemologists often assume epistemic norms are like moral norms, used to evaluate reasoning similarly to how moral norms evaluate actions.

• A key contention here is that the analogy between epistemic and moral norms is not exact and has misled epistemologists.

• A proper understanding of epistemic norms promises a radically new perspective on epistemology.

• This new perspective can shed new light on several central epistemological problems.