Relevance and Normative Conditions in the Use of Reasons

Authors:

Pages: 52-63
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/YXAW9223

Abstract:

The article presents a case for the thesis that everyday linguistic ascriptions of justification depend, among other conditions, upon epistemic norms about the way in which the agent has set the scope of relevant reasons and evidence for the belief. These norms, it is argued, and not criteria for the possession of evidence, determine whether a belief is properly justified in various cases when the agent has missed some relevant and possessed by her evidence. Unlike psychological retrievability, the skill of determining the relevance permits the imposition of rational conditions. Internalist approaches to justification do not explicitly include epistemic requirements for the cognitive mechanisms of setting the scope of relevant reasons in the epistemic evaluation of beliefs but intuitions from everyday ascriptions suggest that the existence of such is likely and that further investigation is necessary to establish whether they should be incorporated.

Keywords:

justification, relevance, use of reasons, having evidence, evidentialism.

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