The Structure of Empirical Knowledge – Chapter One
After reading the first thirty pages of “The Structure of Empirical Knowledge” by Laurence Bonjour I can say that I’m looking forward to listening to the author discuss the challenges that affect theories of epistemic justification. Epistemic justification is nothing more than the reasons (and the criteria which constitute valid reasons) which we possess for thinking that our beliefs are true. The simplicity misleads as Bonjour makes clear. As early as chapter one he attempts to define knowledge, justification, what a theory of justification should include and the challenges associated with each.
Bonjour uses the classic definition for determining what should “constitute a genuine instance of propositional knowledge”. He touches on the Gettier problem but insists that this definition is close enough. The definition looks like this:
(1) A must believe confidently that P,
(2) P must be true, and
(3) A’s belief that P must be adequately justified.
If you meet these three criteria then you are in possession of knowledge. Notice I didn’t say “true knowledge” as that is superfluous. When we say knowledge with this test in mind and we say that we are in possession of it, we know that it passed test number (2) and is therefore true.
(1) and (2) are somewhat straightforward, but in the back of everyone’s mind there is something curious about (3). We may ask, “What does adequately justified mean?”. Bonjour doesn’t waste time in answering by stating that (3) is “clearly the central concept in the whole theory of knowledge”. He attempts to define what epistemic justification is and how it is different from other types of justification. He answers the question by reflecting on why justification is sought and valued.
“What makes us cognitive beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctively cognitive endeavors is truth: we want our beliefs to correctly and accurately depict the world.”
Too bad we don’t have immediate and precise access to this truth. Justification, says Bonjour, is
“..that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point and our objective goal.”
Justification provides us with good reasons for thinking we possess knowledge. And that, according to Bonjour, is what this is all about.
“The distinguishing characteristic of epistemic justification is this its essential or internal relation to the cognitive goal of truth. It follows that one’s cognitive endeavors are epistemically justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs which one has good reason to think are true.”
We want to have an accurate view of the world, but sometimes we fall victim to irresponsibility.
“To accept a belief in the absence of such a reason, however appealing or even mandatory such acceptance might be from some other standpoint, is to neglect the pursuit of truth; such acceptance is, one might say, epistemically irresponsible.”
The challenge remains, however, to come up with a criteria that produces epistemic justification. There’s more though. Our criteria must be shown to be “adequately truth-conducive”. In other words, we can’t just pick any criteria that suits us. We have to pick one that passes yet another test. This Bonjour calls “metajustification“. So, we need a criteria and reasons why our chosen criteria is the most truth-conducive. The rest of the text is devoted to these two considerations.