Justification and the Regress Problem

Abstract

Belief without any justification is blind, or at least unreasonable. One major value of justification is that it relates belief to some relevant end in view. When the end is truth, and truth alone, epistemic justification is all-important. But epistemic justification is not the only kind of justification. Consider prudential justification, for instance. Many of our beliefs are prudentially justified because they are likely to have prudential consequences, that is, because they probably play an important role in bringing about what is in our best prudential interest. But many prudentially justified beliefs are obviously unlikely to be true. Consider, for instance, the case of a person washed asea some 200 miles from the nearest shore. This person, we may plausibly assume, has overwhelming evidence indicating that he cannot swim to safety. But since it is probably in this person’s best prudential interest to believe that he can swim to safety — for given that belief, he will continue to swim and might be rescued — he is, presumably, prudentially justified in believing that he can swim to safety. Clearly, if he had no such belief, he would probably drown immediately, without even trying to reach safety. Thus, although this person’s overwhelming evidence indicates it is false that he can swim to safety, he may nonetheless be prudentially justified in believing that he can, because it is probably in his best prudential interest to believe this