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Problems for Mainstream Evidentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Tommaso Piazza*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

Abstract

Evidentialism says that a subject S’s justification is entirely determined by S’s evidence. The plausibility of evidentialism depends on (1) what kind of entities constitute a subject S’s evidence and (2) what one takes the support relation to consist in. Conee and Feldman’s mainstream evidentialism (ME) incorporates a psychologist answer to (1) and an explanationist answer to (2). ME naturally accommodates perceptual justification. However, it does not accommodate intuitive cases of inferential justification. In the second part of the paper, I consider and reject a reply based on a refined explanationist theory of the support relation proposed by K McCain.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2016

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