A central issue in contemporary epistemology is whether there is a species of (prima facie) justification that is immediate, direct, basic, or foundational. It is puzzling whether and how immediate justification could arise. This is perhaps the core issue that divides foundationalists from coherentists. An older conception of immediate justification is that some beliefs are capable of self-just...

Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. Assuming as internalism does that to have a justified belief, subjects must be aware of the justifiers of the belief and of their relevance to the truth of the belief, Bergmann notes that one is either aware of this relevance conceptually or not. But, says Bergmann, if the required awareness is conce...

Main Objective. The main aim of this work is to provide a new justification of the three norms of objective Bayesian epistemology: that degrees of belief should be (i) probabilities, (ii) calibrated to evidence of physical probabilities, and (iii) sufficiently equivocal or non-extreme. While these norms are typically each justified in different ways, it is shown that they can be given a unified...

This essay deals with the concept of truth in the context of a version of internal realism. In §1 I define some variants of realism using a set of realistic axioms. In §2 I will argue that for semantical reasons we should be realists of some kind. In §3 I plead for an internalistic setting of realism starting from the thesis that truth is, at least, not a non-epistemic concept. We have to bear ...

One of the central projects of formal epistemology concerns the formulation and justification of epistemic norms. The project has three stages: First, the formal epistemologist produces a mathematical model of an agent’s epistemic states—call this the descriptive stage. Next, she formulates, in terms of this model, putative norms that she claims govern these states—call this the normative stage...

I answer Alvin Plantinga’s challenge to provide a ‘proper’ de jure objection to religious belief. What I call the ‘sophisticates’ evidential objection’ (SEO) concludes that sophisticated Christians lack epistemic justification for believing central Christian propositions. The SEO utilizes a theory of epistemic justification in the spirit of the evidentialism of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. I...

I respond to John Greco’s argument that all forms of internalism in epistemology are either false or uninteresting. The paper divides into two sections. First, I explain precisely what internalists and externalists in epistemology disagree over. This puts us in a position to assess whether Greco’s argument succeeds. Second, I present Greco’s argument and offer two objections. 1. Internalism and...