The Function of Epistemic Justification

Abstract

There is a venerable and thoroughly entrenched tradition of regarding epistemic justification as playing an essential cognitive role in the acquisition, maintenance, or even loss of knowledge. Hold fixed that p is true and that S believes that p. Given this, whether S comes to know that p, still knows that p, or no longer knows that p essentially depends upon whether S has acquired, sustained, or lost justification for believing that p. I shall call any theory which regards epistemic justification as playing this essential epistemological function in cognition a Jn-theory. To simplify, we will say that a Jn-theorist is one who holds that - when the truth of p is held constant and S's belief that p is held constant - S's knowledge that p varies directly with the victory of S's justification and indirectly with its defeat.