Representational Justification and Challenges to “the Given”
Representational Justification and Challenges to “the Given”
A paradigmatic example of representational justification is that of an apple on a desk justifying the proposition “that apple is on a desk.” The popular given dilemma is described—roughly, that something nonpropositional cannot be used to justify something propositional. The response is that the semantics of propositions illustrate exactly that what propositions are about justifies the truth of those propositions. Next the issue of rational justificational stopping points is taken up. Because we understand that knowing agents can be justified in what they believe even if they cannot provide those justifications, we understand that those agents need not always have to give justifications for what they believe. Other arguments for why knowers must always have to justify their knowledge are examined: these fail because of delicate matters about tense or because of cognitive/metacognitive confusions.
Keywords: circularity, metacognition, representational justification, the given, justification stopping points, self-reference, Sellars’s dilemma
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