Goldman V.S. Chisholm
This essay will outline the theories of justification proposed by Alvin Goldman
in ‘What is Justified Belief’ and Roderick M. Chisholm in “The Myth of the
Given’. I will then argue that Chisholm’s Internalist account of
justification is more satisfactory than Goldman’s externalist account.
Goldman’s account of justification is unique in the sense that, unlike the
Cartesian assumption concerning justification, it allows for the possibility of
the cognisor not being aware what justifies his or her belief.
Justification is not something the cognisor needs to be able to communicate in
a convincing way to an interlocutor; it instead obtains by virtue of a causal
connection between a belief and the state of external affairs that makes it
true. Justification is then, according to Goldman, an external process that
makes the statement ‘S is justified in believing ϕ at t1’ meaningful. In regard
to basic beliefs (beliefs concerning sense perception), Goldman states that ‘If
S’s belief of ϕ at t1 results from a belief independent process that is
unconditionally reliable, then S’s belief in ϕ at T1 is justified’(Goldman
341). Non-basic beliefs (beliefs achieved through reliable
processes like memory and reasoning) contrastingly arise via a synthesis of
basic beliefs achieved through an unconditionally reliable process and
conditionally reliable processes like reason. Not only is justification
something the cognisor need not be aware of, Goldman also claims that
justification needs to be discussed in non-epistemic terms. Epistemic
terms like ‘indubitable’ and ‘self-evident’ must be replaced by ‘metaphysical,
modal, semantic or syntactic expressions’ (Goldman 333) in order to be
meaningful or explanatory. Goldman’s ultimate purpose in proposing this
account is to provide an explanatory account of justification, reveal something
substantive and insightful concerning the nature of justification, and to
reshape the epistemology by virtue of discarding the Cartesian view of
justification.
Chisholm’s account of justification is unlike Goldman’s in two fundamental
senses. Firstly, Chisholm’s account is internalist; the cognisor
ultimately possesses the justification for his basic and non-basic
belief. Secondly, justification is spoken of in epistemic/subjective
terms. Chisholm’s account is foundationalist in the sense that all
beliefs can be thought of as participating in a large structure which have a
self-justifying belief as their foundation. Unlike Goldman’s externalist
view where the foundation of one’s belief is an external causal process, the
foundation in Chisholm’s system is the raw subjective experience combined with
a proto-logical/non-cognitive structure (Chisholm 91). This immediate state of ‘the
given’, which Chisholm claims is non-inferentially justified, is what
presupposes all inferential knowledge. One may refer to ‘the given’ via
propositional or ‘appeared to’ statements. When someone expresses a
propositional attitude, he or she is expressing a non-inferential and
subjective state such as ‘I think’ or ‘I seem to remember’. One can also
express the subjective state of raw phenomenological experience via ‘appeared
to statements’. The statements take the form of ‘X appears to me bluely’
(Chisholm 87) These are foundational because, when attempting to justify
an inferentially justified belief, one will follow a linear progression of
justification through other inferential beliefs and ultimately end with
non-inferentially justified states of belief.
Chisholm’s view, I would argue, is more a favourable justificatory
theory. I would argue that all knowledge has, as its foundation (by
foundation I mean something that must obtain for knowledge to be possible),
some sort of sense content which is indubitable; similar to the way G.E. Moore
could not doubt the perception of hands. One could doubt the substantive
nature of the experience as Descartes did and thereby be sceptical of one’s
capacity of having knowledge of something like the ‘real’ or the
external based on this experience. However, one could never doubt the raw
experience itself, as it is simply ‘given’. The distinction between basic
and non-basic beliefs is telling of the reality of this state, as a non-basic
belief implies that you are saying more than is presented/given; something synthetic which draws
from the body of inferential beliefs.
I would also argue that
Chisholm’s account provides a satisfactory framework for the basic elements of
the scientific enterprise. All humans theorise about the nature of the world,
and with these drives are led into the world of superstructure and non-basic
beliefs; where it is not the case that ‘anything goes’. This is, I would
argue, when the true meaning of justification presents itself. Justification
is essentially the dialectical process of building a better non-basic picture
of the world by virtue of communal sharing of experience and ideas; an attempt
at sifting what can be said from what cannot be said.
One could imagine Goldman
arguing that Chisholm’s account falls prey to the very ‘epistemic’ terms he
attempted to evade in his own theory; the ‘given’ is after all something that,
according to Chisholm, we can characterise as ‘self-presenting’ and
‘indubitable’. Are these terms in fact non-substantive as Goldman would
claim? I would argue, on the contrary, that they are substantive, and it
is in all actuality Goldman’s view of justification that non-substantive
itself, and could never be such, as it ventures into the realm of the unknowable;
the logic of the world in-itself; of which we frankly do not have a conceivable
substance/value of which one could build a substantive theory upon. ‘S is
justified in believing ϕ at t1’ is never instantiated in the external world,
and speaking of such a happening is meaningless. If one is to think of
justification as something utilised to form better beliefs, then justification
must be an application of some abstract bettering/critical principles to data
in order to create a robust belief super-structure. These principles will
ultimately be internal, psychological, conceivably knowable, and bear no
relation to whether external phenomena obtain or not. They will also be
falsifiable (replaceable); meaning that justification is a heuristic enterprise;
no one justificatory method will provide an appropriate response to all areas
warranting justification. This structure builds on the ‘given’ Chisholm
illustrates; that which makes the superstructure possible, yet is not subject
to revision by the superstructure.
Science has long
abandoned its attempt to provide an explanatory account of the world
‘in-itself’. The history of science can be characterized as a transition
from an explanatory methodology that attempts to provide an account of the inner
working or logic of nature into the sheer descriptive methodology that
describes phenomena as it appears to us. That is why I would argue
Goldman’s account fails. Goldman attempts to posit a supposed relational
phenomenon called ‘justification’ that exists in the world and independently of
our experience of it. While he attempts to legitimize this by using
‘substantive’ vocabulary, I would argue that Goldman’s belief in his discovery
of the true metaphysical language of the universe is extremely naïve and unfounded.
As there is nothing numerically, scientifically, or materially distinct between
knowledge and belief, any attempt to find the one factor that distinguishes
them using scientific terms is meaningless. The nature of justification
instead lies, I believe, in the subjective; in the minds of those who have created it to form better, more valuable
beliefs.
In summation, while Goldman
attempts to provide a substantive theory of justification that relies on
external processes, I submit that Chisholm’s internalist theory of
justification is more apt at describing the nature of justification.
Work Cited:
Sosa, Ernest, Jaegwon Kim, and
Matthew McGrath. Epistemology:
an anthology. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2010. Print.
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