Apriori Reasons : Two Difficult Notions and an Even More Difficult Connection

I am not very satisfied by the familiar accounts of our two key notions and their relation. There is no point here in extensive critical discussions. Let us look just at two prominent examples. When one wants to know what knowledge is, one needs to know what true justified belief is. Part of the issue thus is when to call a belief justified. TIns is hotly debated, producing more smoke than fire. However, all parties roughly agree on the following pneumatic or rather hydrodynamic picture of justification: There are all the propositions, possible objects of belief, each being represented by a kind of bulb. The propositions entertain justificatory relations, represented by channels or pipes between the bulbs, the width of the pipes corresponding to the strength of the justificatory relations. So far, we have an empty justificatory network. Now, however, we POUf some viscous fluid into the network, called warrant, which diffuses through the pipes. Most of the bulbs remain empty, i. e., unbelieved, but many bulbs get filled by warrant, i. e. believed, and the amount of fluid they contain corresponds to their degree of justification. Ibis is a very intuitive pi<.-1:ure and thus widely shared. 1 Disagreement emerges about the issue where that fluid comes from. Foundationalists say that it is produced in special basic bulbs, be they apriori propositions, sense-data, or whatever. Coherentists say that it is produced by the network itself, in the pipes or by a speClal kind of clustering. Extemalists say that it is not produced in the belief network at all, but by facts extraneous to the network. Contextualists say that, wherever warrant is produced, how much of it diffuses through the network depends on the Context in which the network is situated. And so on. These are important divergences. What irritates me more, though, is the appareut uncritical acceptance of the hydrodynamic pieture of justification. It is just a