A Note on Justification: Its Definition and its Criteria David-Hillel Ruben Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 37, No. 4. (Jun., 1977), pp. 552-555. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28197706%2937%3A4%3C552%3AANOJID%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.
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DISCUSSION
A NOTE ON JUSTIFICATION:
ITS DEFINITION AND ITS CRITERIA
Nicholas Rescher has recently reminded us of the distinction between a definition of truth and a criterion of truth. "There are two basic alternatives for explicating propositional truth. One is the definitional route: the attempt to provide a definition of the conception 'is true' as a characteristic of propositions. The second is the criterial route: the attempt to specify the test-conditions for determining whether or not there is warrent for applying the characterization 'is true' to given propositions." (The Coherence Theory of T r t ~ t h O , xford University Press, p. 1.)
The same distinction between these two different sorts of questions can be made wtih regard to knowledge and justification, as well as to truth. Most of the contemporary discussions of knowledge (and, at least implicitly, of justification, since most of the interesting problems about knowledge have arisen over the so-called justification condition) have been concerned with the definition of knowledge.' This has been especially true in the aftermath of the Gettier paper and the continuing attempt by many epistemologists to elaborate a set of necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge. As illuminating as some of these discussions may have been, they have not necessarily helped us with criterial questions-they have not "put us into a position to implement and apply the concept[sl by instructing us as to the circumstances under which there is rational warrant to characterize or class something . . ." (Rescher, op. cit., p. 2) as knowledge or warrant. As one pertinent example, consider the causal theory of knowledge, as it has been advanced recently in the literature. In a simplified version of the case of noninferential knowl-, edge, to know (or, to be justified in believing) that p is to have one's belief that p be causally connected to the state of affairs, p. Some version of the causal theory of knowing seems to me to be a likely candidate for an adequate definition of knowledge, but it could hardly help us with our criterial problems. It may be true (by definition) that we are justified in believing that p when p is causally responsible 1 As far as I know, the only place in the current philosophical literature which explicitly mentions the problem of a criterion of knowledge is David Braine's Aristotelian Society lecture, "The Nature of Knowledge," delivered November 8, 1971. But . . to treat some sort of he proceeds to conflate a criterion with a definition: justitiedness as a criterion of knowledge, or part of its definition, involves a viciorts circularity." (p. 44).
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for our belief. But such a definition does not "put us into a position to implement and apply" the concept of justified belief by "instructing us as to the circumstances under which there is rational warrant to characterize or class something . . ." as justified belief, for we should first have to know that p was the case (and, indeed, that p caused our belief that p). But such a criterion could not really settle whether our belief that p was justified, for we should then like to know how we are in a position to ascertain that the state of affairs, p, obtains, and moreover, that p is the cause of our belief that p. Indeed, the definition could not, qua criterion, settle whether the concept of justified belief applies, for its use would reraise the very question ("Am I justified in believing that p?") that its use was intended to settle. I am not arguing that the causal theorists intended their account to be criterial, but only pointing out why such an account could not be. Classical epistemologists did intend their accounts of justified belief to be criterial (and perhaps definitional as well). The em~iricist account, for example, of foundation beliefs being "directly" justified in experience is certainly intended as a criterion of justified belief, A man can tell if his foundation belief is justified by looking to experience. Can we really make sense of these criterial question about knowledge and justification? Criteria1 questions about justification certainly seem worthwhile. Indeed, what would be the point of bothering to construct a definition of knowledge, or of justification, unless one could at least sometimes be in a position to determine whether or not he did know or was justified? If criterial questions are to make sense, there is one requirement upon which I think we can insist. No acceptable criterion of justified belief can by syl?zmetvical, in the sense that the content of the belief be identical with the state of affairs which is to serve as the criterion. This surely is what made a causal theory of knowledge, as we formulated it anyway, inadequate for criterial purposes. We asked: w h e n are we justified in believing that p? To be told that we are justified in believing that p when p causes the belief is no help, for we can then ask the same question about the criterion that we asked in the first place and which the criterion was intended to settle, viz., are we justified in believing that p does obtain (and causes our belief)? Precisely the same point holds whether the definition of knowledge is formulated in terms of objective states of affairs, as it is with the causal theory of knowledge, or whether it is formulated in terms of
experiences. For instance, suppose it were a necessary and sufficient condition for the justification of one's foundational or noninferential belief that p, that one simply experiences p. But the necessary and sufficient condition, if it were one, could not serve as a criterion of foundational justification. One will want to be in a position to determine wlzen the criterion is fulfilled, that is, when it is p that one is experiencing. But that is only to repeat the initial question about the justification one has for believing that p. Now, a philosopher might argue that criterial questions do not always make sense, for there is a class of knowledge claims about which it is absurd to inquire about the criteria on which one is warranted to any of those claims. But if, as classical epistemology has always presupposed, criterial questions are to make sense for all claims to knowledge, then some criteria for justified belief simply must be assymetrical-the criterion must be different from the content of the belief for which the criterion is to be a criterion. What would such assymetrical criterial claims look like? If one accepts the legitimacy of criterial questions for all knowledge claims, it seems to me that one will be driven toward some version of a coherence theory. The criteria for justified belief that p would be that p is related in certain ways to ("coheres with") certain other beliefs. It is not my purpose here to formulate, let alone defend, a coherence theory of justification. But I do want to point out that it is only assymetric criterial claims like that advanced by a coherence theory, in which the criteria are other than the belief for which one is producing the criterion of justification, which can be epistemologically informative, settle epistemological questions, for it is only they which do not to coilapse into symmetrical, and hence uninformative, criterial claims about justification. If this is right, it compares with a claim many philosophers have made about competing theories of truth. It has been often noticed that whereas the correspondence theory of truth might serve as a definition of truth, whatever plausibility a coherence theory had arose in construing it as attempting to offer criteria for truth. Indeed, whereas one can distinguish between a definition of truth and a definition of knowledge (or justification), however related they may be, it is not even clear that one can draw any distinction at all between a criterion of truth and a criterion of knowledge (or justification). Classical empiricism, with its stress on grounding knowledge in experience, or 'physicalist' theories like a causal theory of knowledge,
might tempt us as definitions or analyses, or rational reconstructions, of knowledge or justification. But if we ask criteria1 questions, a coherence theory of justification nicely escapes the epistemological triviality into which some of its more obvious would-be competitors fall. DAVID-HILLEL RUBEN.
UNIVERSITYOF ESSEX.
