Consciousness, Experience, and Justification
Harold Langsam
Canadian Journal of Philosophy March 1, 2002 DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2002.10716509 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that views on which experiences distinctively justify beliefs can be made sense of and explain their historical appeal, and contends that coherentism and reliabilism appear to reject the idea that experiences justify beliefs at all. |
Abstract
A belief must have justification if it is to count as knowledge. And it is a commonplace thought that in certain circumstances experiences can serve as justifications for beliefs. Moreover, many have thought that there is something distinctive about the wayin which experiences justify beliefs, and that there is something distinctive about experiences which accounts for the distinctive way in which they justify beliefs. In this paper, I seek to elucidate views about experience and justification that can make sense of these thoughts and that can show us why so many have been attracted to them. I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs.