Defeaters and Higher-Level Requirements

Internalists tend to impose on justification higher-level requirements, according to which a belief is justified only if the subject has a higher-level belief (i.e., a belief about the epistemic credentials of a belief). I offer an error theory that explains the appeal of this requirement: analytica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Philosophical quarterly Vol. 55; no. 220; pp. 419 - 436
Main Author Bergmann, Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishers 01.07.2005
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Blackwell
Oxford University Press
Subjects
Agnosticism
Attitudes
Belief
Empirical evidence
Epistemic justification
Epistemology
Errors
Externalism
Internalism
Justified beliefs
Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language
Philosophy
Propositional attitudes
Psychological attitudes
Skepticism
Theory
Truth
Values
Belief
Uncertainty
Internalism
Externalism
Error
Justification
Contextualism
Scepticism
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Summary:Internalists tend to impose on justification higher-level requirements, according to which a belief is justified only if the subject has a higher-level belief (i.e., a belief about the epistemic credentials of a belief). I offer an error theory that explains the appeal of this requirement: analytically, a belief is not justified if we have a defeater for it, but contingently, it is often the case that to avoid having defeaters, our beliefs must satisfy a higher-level requirement. I respond to the objection that externalists who endorse this error theory will be forced to accept a radical form of scepticism.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Commentary-1
content type line 14
ISSN:0031-8094
1467-9213
DOI:10.1111/j.0031-8094.2005.00408.x