RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING

S. Joel Garver

CHAPTER THREE

Believing as One Ought:
Well-Established Practices

Section III

Some important distinctions have run beneath the surface of our discussion and, I think, have played an important role in the rejection of deontology for the purpose of analyzing epistemic justification. These distinctions, however, are not always clearly drawn by epistemologists and can, therefore, confuse discussions of epistemology, leading to the adoption of unviable notions such as the deontological conception. Moreover, some of the confusion is due to the fact that the terminology in play is ambiguous even when taken in context. Thus a reference to the "justification of a belief" could be taken in several senses.

In order to clarify our discussion, I hope to draw out these important distinctions in a way that is helpful and illuminating. If I am careful, I think I will be able to show why the deontological conception of justification is so appealing to some philosophers, how deontological notions do connect up with some epistemic concerns, and be able to tease out some of the ambiguities in the concept of justification.

The first distinction is between a belief being justified and its being reasonable to take a belief to be justified. Both involve a certain conditions being met or require certain states of affairs to obtain. Nevertheless, being justified focuses on "principles of justification or adequacy of grounds of belief," while the rationality of taking a belief to be justified will focus on practices of belief-formation. Allow me to elaborate on the difference.

The analysis of being justified has historically concentrated on conditions that are purely general, that is, assuming individual uniformity across particular contexts, and so universality. Even if we reject such a search for unitary analyses (and I think one would be well advised to do so), pluralistic and contextualized analyses also have their own generality and uniformity, though within more modest spheres. "Being justified" still focuses on principles and abstract grounds, not practices.< /P>

On the other hand, the rationality of taking beliefs to be justified will focus on human practices, in all their particularity--what it is rational for a subject to do, in what way belief-forming practices can support themselves, how the outputs of practices cohere or fail to cohere with other practices, and so on. How particular we must be in respect to patterns of human doxastic practice will be a topic that will concern us somewhat in following chapters.

A second distinction is between a belief being justified and doing something to show or prove or argue or persuade someone that a belief is to be taken as justified or is, in fact, justified. Being justified is a state, while the latter activities are processes. We might associate phrases like "justifying," "giving reasons," "defending belief," "showing justification," and so on with these activities. These activities, however, are not themselves all of a piece and lead t o a third distinction.

The notion of showing justification suggests a process by which a subject attempts to show, argue, prove, demonstrate, that a belief, in fact, has justification (the objective state). The idea is more one of an appeal to the conditions which have actually conferred justification upon a particular belief (e.g., adequate grounds, lack of overriders, etc.).

Justifying a belief, on the other hand, does not necessarily imply that the belief in question, does, in fact, have justification. Rather, "justifying a belief" suggests a somewhat more subjective process by which a subject attempts rationally to persuade herself or another that a particular belief is to be taken as having justification, perhaps even if that belief cannot, in a stricter sense, really be shown to have justification.

This is not to say that justifying a belief can include any and all forms of "persuasion" (a gun to the head, psychotropic drugs, sensory deprivation, rhetorical techniques, etc.). Rather the idea of "justifying" is a normative one involving notions of rationality, logical argumentation, use of evidence, and the like. Such a process successfully occurs within shared and accurate assumptions about under what conditions it is rational to a take a belief to be justfied. What it is rational to believe or be persuaded of concerning whether or not a particular belief has justification, however, is not necessarily what is always true or objectively demonstrable (in a loose, non-Aristotelian sense of "demonstration").

To add to the confusion, these activities (showing justification and justifying) are closely associated and interconnected. Justifying a belief may result in showing justification if, for instance, the belief in question does, in fact, have justification and a successful and proper appeal is made to the conditions of its having justification.

On the other hand, one may succeed in justifying a belief to oneself or another person though the belief in question lacks justification. That justifying may be successful because the subject (and his interlocutor) may share a practice they erroneously believe to confer justification, though it is a practice that they quite rationally take to be justification-conferring. In this case, it seems infelicitous at best to say that the subject has shown his belief to be justified, though the belief is rationally taken to be justified.

Finally, a subject may successfully show her belief to justified without thereby justifying the belief to anyone. That is, a proper appeal may be made to certain conditions that establish the belief to have justification and, nevertheless, the parties involved may remain incredulous and do so quite rationally. For instance, the dialoguing partners may, quite rationally, hold to and engage in different belief-forming practices (due to upbringing, expertise, culture, etc.) and thus lack the shared assumptions about rationality that are necessary for justifying belief.

Showing justification and justifying a belief, however, may and often do (and I will argue this more below) make appeals to the very same sorts of conditions. Further, I suspect that more often than not, when a belief is successfully justified, it has also been shown to have justification. Thus, showing justification and justifying a belief are very similar sorts of activities to the degree that sometimes the very same activity may be correctly described in both ways.

The difference lies, in part, in that showing justification has a certain objectivity and absoluteness: objective standards of proof, argument, and the like that may or may not obtain quite apart from what may or may not be rational for a party to believe. Justifying has a certain subjectivity and relativity: standards of rational persuasiveness, intelligibility, and the like which define what it is rational to believe and which can vary somewhat from one person or population or context to another. As a heated sword cuts insofar as it is sharp and burns insofar as it is hot, a line of argument may show justification insofar as it meets certain standards of proof and justify a belief insofar as it rightly appeals to standards of rational ity.

It will turn out, then, that showing justification is to be more closely associated with a belief having justification (rather than the rationality of taking a belief to be justified). Justifying a belief, however, is to be more closely associated with the rationality of taking a belief to be justified (rather than with a belief's having justification).

Recall our earlier discussion (Chapter One) regarding the practice of justifying our beliefs to ourselves and others (consider this as distinct from showing justification). There I suggested that, as honest interlocutors interested in rational argumentation, we have two lines of defense available to us if we are asked to justify our beliefs. First, we may simply present what we take to be the grounds or source of the particular belief or beliefs in question (which is why some access to grounds is important). If that is inadequate, then, second, we can try to show that the doxastic practice that formed the belief is one which is rational to take as conferring justification.

What these two lines of defense have in common is a more or less shared implicit embeddedness in the conditions of epistemic rationality. I am suggesting, then, that there is a close connection between one means of justifying belief (a process) and the rationality of taking a belief to be justified (a state). It's not that one must justify a belief (or, much less, show justification) in order to be rational in taking a belief to be justified, but rather an appeal (implicit or explicit) to the conditions of rationality in taking a belief to be justified is precisely what is instrumental in justifying belief. Or so I would contend.

Here's why the process of justifying our beliefs, especially in respect to the second line of defense, must depend on considerations of rationality. In his article "Epistemic Circularity" (1989b:319-349) Alston argues, quite convincingly, I think, that "with respect to even those sources of belief of which we are normally the most confident, we have no sufficient noncircular reason for taking [all of] them to be reliable" (Alston 1991:146). The basic problem is that even if there is a noncircular proof of reliability for some source of belief by appealing to another source (and even that is unlikely), "if we pursue the question far enough we will either (a) encounter one or more sources for which a noncircular proof cannot be given or (b) we will be caught up in circularity, or (c) we will be involved in an infinite regress" (Alston 1991:147). Since (c) is not a possibility (since the sources of limited human knowledge are surely finite), we must be involved in circularity. Certainly, if a particular ground is reliable and justification conferring then we can use beliefs based on that ground to show its reliability, since we do not have be justified in our conclusion (i.e., that the ground is reliable) in order to be justified in the premises (part icular beliefs).

That type of argument, while not viciously or logically circular, is, however, epistemically circular. Such a circular argument may successfully show justification and, moreover, provide good enough evidence to a sympathetic, rational challenge , thus, justifying the belief to the challenger. On the other hand, it is, insofar as it is circular, a weak defense against a serious, critical challenge, even when it is successful in showing justification. The defense may be weak (in terms of justifying the belief) when, for instance, the subject and the challenger legitimately and rationally disagree concerning whether a practice was properly engaged in, whether the practice is licit, and so on. Thes amount to differences concerning the rationality of taking certain practices (and how they are properly engaged in) to be justification-conferring.

It follows from what we have said so far that it is not possible to make practical determinations of justification (either in justifying belief or by showing justification) by stepping outside of all our doxastic practices to provide a transcendent, Cartesian outlook on the justification of any particular belief. Thus the conditions for the rationality of taking a belief to be justified, as well as all defenses of justification (justifying) and all showing of justification, must exist within practices .

Focusing on justifying, let us return to the two kinds of defense that can be provided to justify a belief in a rational and proper manner. (Remember that we exclude from the idea of justifying a belief techniques of persuasion such a brain-washing, threats, hypnosis, and so forth.) Both of these kinds of defense can also be successful, under certain conditions, in showing that a belief has justification and in justifying it. Let's expand what has already been said.

First, we can produce the justification-conferring grounds for our belief. This is an implicit appeal to the doxastic practice in which the belief was formed: for example, an appeal to the doxastic practice involving testimony, "I think she was at the party because Martin said he talked to her." We assume that critic shares the practice and, on the basis of that implicit assumption, make an appeal simply to the grounds of the belief. Thus, if our critic shares the same practice, takes it to be reliable, and believes us to have engaged in the practice properly, then the critic will be satisfied (e.g., the critic trusts testimony, in particular, Martin's testimony, and she knows that Martin wasn't drunk at the party). If the parties involved have rationally assumed the practice in question to be justification-conferring, then the belief will have been justified to the critic (and hopefully the critic is satisfied).

Such a justifying defense is provided within a shared practice and could draw on epistemically circular arguments, if necessary. It may also involve arguments about how the practice in question ought to be engaged in (e.g., "You shouldn't have believed Martin when he was drunk!"). Thus, one can justify a belief by appealing to grounds that have been employed within a practice that the subject and critic mutually and correctly assume to be rationally taken as justification-conferring. Both parties could be in error regarding the rationality of taking a particular practice to be justification-conferring or could have mistakenly applied standards of rationality. It is, nevertheless, to the conditions of rationality that an appeal must be made, if we are to argue rationally and truly justify our beliefs.

Even with such a defense, however, the critic may not be so easily satisfied--all the more so in cases where the belief appears morally defective, pathological, dangerous, or otherwise wildly divergent from the critic's own sensibilities. In such a case, a shared practice or a mutual judgment of rationality is likely to be lacking. This brings us to the second line of defense.

Under certain conditions, Alston argues, it is reasonable or rational to suppose that the source of a belief--the underlying doxastic practice--is reliable and thus that the belief is prima facie justified. As a second line of defense, if we can show that such conditions obtain, we will have succeeded in showing that the supposition of (prima facie) justification is reasonable. This is not the same as proving or demonstrating or unveiling actual justification (though it may succeed in doing so in an epistemically circular fashion). It is not a justification of the reliability of the practice as a source of belief. In order to rationally take a belief to have prima facie justification, it is not even required that there be no factors overriding the justification of the belief. Nevertheless, a successful appeal to those conditions that do constitute the rationality of taking a belief to be justified, will also succeed in justifying the belief by way of a second line of defense.

What conditions constitute rationality (and how we can go about showing that it is rational to suppose a practice to be justification conferring) is a topic that will be addressed below in greater detail. For now let us simply remember that this is a matter of the practical rationality of taking a practice to be reliable and justification conferring, that is, it concerns the rationality of what a subject has done in coming to a belief. Therefore, any attempt to show that it is rational to take a belief to be justified (or that it is rational to make certain ascriptions of justification), will have to focus on what the subject has done in forming the belief. That is, it will focus on the nature of the doxastic practices that have been engaged in. (T hese last points are drawn from Alston 1991:170-175.)

An important upshot of this discussion is that the standards to be met for the rationality of supposing a belief to be justified and, thus, for justifying a belief will not necessarily delineate a set of beliefs that are actually justified (and thus actually show justification). Not every practice that is reasonable to take as justification-conferring need actually be so. Furthermore, such reasonableness can be overridden. In terms of justifying beliefs, we may fall further short of actual justification. Regarding the first line of defense, we and the critic may both be mistaken, and quite rationally so, about whether a practice actually succeeds in conferring justification or about how a practice is properly engaged in. In the case of the second line of defense, it will turn out--as we shall see--that not every doxastic practice which we can show to be reasonably taken to be justification-conferring is truly so. Furthermore, it is only prima facie justification that is taken to be conferr ed and mistakes can be made about the existence of overriders.

It is my contention, then, that since there is no noncircular, practice-transcendent standards of reasonableness, our standards for when it is reasonable to take someone to be (prima facie) justified in a belief do not coincide with those for being justified. Moreover, I will suggest in section V that these standards (of reasonableness in taking a belief to be justified) are embodied in a deontological conception of justification. I will further explore the relations between actual justification, practical determinations of justification, and the deontological conception.