Abstract
In this paper I’ll focus first on the general idea of evidentialism and then on the explanationist’s suggestion as to how we understand the content of a belief fitting evidence. I’ll argue that, in general, evidentialists have difficulty understanding foundationally justified belief. Further, I’ll argue than an explanationist will need something other than best explanation so that the view can account for the idea that we discover explanda that are in need of an explanans.
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Notes
- 1.
Goldman (2011) discusses this and related issues, pp. 257–59.
- 2.
See Poston (2016) for a powerful presentation of this concern. As Kevin McCain has pointed out to me, however, it should be noted that if one doesn’t require that evidence be evidence of which one is aware, there might at any given time be a great deal in one’s subconscious or one’s dispositions to believe that could be brought to mind. The question then becomes whether this would satisfy the internalist moved by the desire to include access conditions for justified belief.
- 3.
Roughly the idea that the mere fact that I find myself believing P gives me prima facie justification for the belief.
- 4.
Huemer’s (2001) view. Roughly, the idea that when it seems to me that P (where this is supposed to be something different from mere belief) that fact gives me prima facie justification for believing P.
- 5.
Or is explained by something that explains my evidence, or is entailed or probabilistically implied by something that explains my evidence. The permutations of the view can get very complicated.
- 6.
Kevin McCain suggested to me that it is the awareness of pain that might be the explandum where the pain is the explanans. But we will still need an epistemic account of how we get the data that we are aware of pain. We need to start somewhere.
- 7.
It is perhaps for this reason that McCain (2014, p. 120) seems ready to incorporate coherentist insights into his account. Phenomenal seemings also seem to play a critical role in terminating regresses. As we see later, if it is either coherence or seemings that do the epistemological work, we will have located there the source of the relevant justification.
- 8.
A model that needs a great deal of refinement to be even prima facie plausible.
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Fumerton, R. (2018). Evidentialism and Explanatory Fit. In: McCain, K. (eds) Believing in Accordance with the Evidence. Synthese Library, vol 398. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95993-1_19
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