Discovery of infinitism via the regress problem
Just reading more of the article on Coherentist Theories of Justification. I already note a statement made about the infamous "regress problem" in epistemology:
Now, I am sure that I never heard of this problem when I actually studied epistemology. Nevertheless, it does seem to me to be a necessary first step in that study. I actually arrived at this skeptical conclusion myself as an undergraduate, based on my own reflection at the time that I was studying epistemology. My--very unclear--language at the time that I used to express this view was "Nothing can be ultimately justified", by which I meant that nothing can be justified in the final analysis because it ultimately rests upon some assumption(s) that has not been justified.
WTF is an infinitist???
Here is an account of infinitism as published in an article called "Modest Infinitism" by Dr Jeremy Fantl of Harvard University:
Okay, that sounds like it's kinda pricing justification out of the market, but okay, we'll go with it for the purposes of reading this Stanford article.
Ah, now I understand the value of the infinitist position! My subsumptive justification can be reduced to a type of coherentism, but infinitism cannot be reduced to either foundationalism or coherentism. Very clever, even though it does this at the expense of not having any set of assumptions that can be deemed "safe" qua noninferential. However, there is an analogy to be made for infinitism via the Cosmological Argument, the reply to which has only ever been that an infinite chain of causation does not require an unchanging first cause, such as God. An infinite chain of causes will each support each other with perfect logical consistency, as Tarski recognised. The same logic seems to apply to epistemology, since there is nothing wrong with having an infinite chain of justification, because all the justifications will support each other with consistency there too. Except of course that the question therefore becomes whether any one justification in the chain requires a justification itself to be a justification. I assume that it does not, or else knowledge as justified true belief will simply be priced out of the market. On the other hand, it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that any one justification does not require a justification to be a justification. This would therefore make infinitism very attractive to me, because then the pressure is off any one assumption from being the be-all and end-all, i.e. non-inferential. It seems like truly trustworthy non-inferential assumptions might be pretty hard to come by in epistemology.
Skeptics maintain that the regress cannot be avoided and hence that justification is impossible.
Now, I am sure that I never heard of this problem when I actually studied epistemology. Nevertheless, it does seem to me to be a necessary first step in that study. I actually arrived at this skeptical conclusion myself as an undergraduate, based on my own reflection at the time that I was studying epistemology. My--very unclear--language at the time that I used to express this view was "Nothing can be ultimately justified", by which I meant that nothing can be justified in the final analysis because it ultimately rests upon some assumption(s) that has not been justified.
Infinitists endorse the regress as well, but argue that the regress is not vicious and hence does not show that justification is impossible.
WTF is an infinitist???
Here is an account of infinitism as published in an article called "Modest Infinitism" by Dr Jeremy Fantl of Harvard University:
Infinitism, a theory of justification most recently developed and defended by Peter Klein, is the view that justification is a matter of having an infinite series of non-repeating reasons for a proposition.
Okay, that sounds like it's kinda pricing justification out of the market, but okay, we'll go with it for the purposes of reading this Stanford article.
Foundationalists and coherentists agree that the regress can be avoided and that justification is possible.
Ah, now I understand the value of the infinitist position! My subsumptive justification can be reduced to a type of coherentism, but infinitism cannot be reduced to either foundationalism or coherentism. Very clever, even though it does this at the expense of not having any set of assumptions that can be deemed "safe" qua noninferential. However, there is an analogy to be made for infinitism via the Cosmological Argument, the reply to which has only ever been that an infinite chain of causation does not require an unchanging first cause, such as God. An infinite chain of causes will each support each other with perfect logical consistency, as Tarski recognised. The same logic seems to apply to epistemology, since there is nothing wrong with having an infinite chain of justification, because all the justifications will support each other with consistency there too. Except of course that the question therefore becomes whether any one justification in the chain requires a justification itself to be a justification. I assume that it does not, or else knowledge as justified true belief will simply be priced out of the market. On the other hand, it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that any one justification does not require a justification to be a justification. This would therefore make infinitism very attractive to me, because then the pressure is off any one assumption from being the be-all and end-all, i.e. non-inferential. It seems like truly trustworthy non-inferential assumptions might be pretty hard to come by in epistemology.
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