Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T21:30:51.144Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conservatism, Basic Beliefs, and the Diachronic and Social Nature of Epistemic Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Jeremy Koons
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Discussions of conservatism in epistemology often fail to demonstrate that the principle of conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations. In this paper, I hope to show two things. First, there is a defensible version of the principle of conservatism, a version that applies only to what I will call our basic beliefs. Those who deny that conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations do so because they fail to take into account the necessarily social, diachronic and self-correcting nature of our epistemic practice. Second, I will attempt to show how our basic beliefs are justified via this principle of conservatism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , October 2006 , pp. 203 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, Jonathan E. 1990. “Conservatism and Tacit Confirmation,” Mind 99:396, pp. 559–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Jonathan E. 1996. “An overlooked argument for epistemic conservatism,” Analysis 56:2, pp. 80–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audi, Robert 1993. The Structure of Justification. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert 1997. “Study Guide,” in Sellars, Wilfrid, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Donald 1974. “Evolutionary Epistemology,” in Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XIV Book 1. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, pp. 413–463.Google Scholar
Christensen, David 1994. “Conservatism in Epistemology,” Noûs 28:1, pp. 69–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, Richard 1996. Climbing Mount Improbable. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Engel, Mylan Jr. 1992. “Personal and Doxastic Justification in Epistemology”, Philosophical Studies 67:2, pp. 133–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foley, Richard 1982. “Epistemic Conservatism,” Philosophical Studies 43:2, pp. 165–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Alvin I. 1978. “Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition,” The Journal of Philosophy 75:10, pp. 509–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Alvin I. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Alvin I. 1988. “Strong and Weak Justification,” in Tomberlin, James E. (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 2: Epistemology. Atascadero, California: Ridgeview Publishing Company, pp. 51–69.Google Scholar
Goldstick, Daniel 1971. “Methodological Conservatism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 8:2, pp. 186–191.Google Scholar
Goldstick, Daniel 1976. “More on Methodological Conservatism,” Philosophical Studies 30, pp. 193–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, Gilbert 1986. Change in View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip 1993. The Advancement of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1959. “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research,” in Taylor, C.W., ed., The Third (1959) University of Utah Research Conference on the Identification of Scientific Talent. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, pp. 162–74. Reprinted in Kuhn 1977, pp. 225-39.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lance, Mark 2000. “The Best is the Enemy of the Good: Bayesian epistemology as a case study in unhelpful idealization,” in Shanks, Niall and Gardner, Robert B. (eds.) Logic, Probability, and Science. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Lance, Mark and O'Leary-Hawthorne, John 1997. The Grammar of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Isaac 1991. The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing: Changing Beliefs Through Inquiry. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, John Stuart 1978 (1859). On Liberty, ed. Rapaport, Elizabeth. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in The Philosophical Review 60:1 (January), pp. 20–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid 1956. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Feigl, Herbert and Scriven, Michael, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I, The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Reprinted in Sellars 1991, pp. 127-96.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid 1991: Science, Perception and Reality. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence 1975. “Methodological Conservatism,” The Philosophical Review 84:3, pp. 374–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1958. Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition, Anscombe, G.E.M., transl. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1969. On Certainty, Anscombe, G.E.M. and von Wright, G.H., eds., Paul, Denis and Anscombe, G.E.M., transl. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar