Without Justification

Written by <a href='/index.php?option=com_community&view=profile&userid=68&Itemid=121'>danieleaton</a>

Tuesday, 04 December 2007 05:33

Jonathan Sutton, Without Justification, MIT Press, 2007, 180pp Reviewed by Earl Conee for NDPR: "The main thesis of this work is that epistemically justified belief is knowledge (JK). JK has the striking implication that no justified belief is false, as the author Jonathan Sutton well knows. A case for JK is made in the first two chapters. The other two chapters defend views about testimony and inference, with arguments that are largely independent of JK. A main topic of the chapter on testimony is acquiring knowledge of a proposition from the testimony of one who knows it. This is held to require knowing that the testifier knows the proposition (KK). A main topic of the chapter on inference is good inference, good in that it has the most important epistemic virtue for an inference. This is held to be an inference that derives knowledge of the conclusion from knowledge of the premises (GIK). As Sutton well knows, GIK has the striking implication that no good inference has a false conclusion. Other extraordinary epistemic positions are defended along the way." more

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