Description
Book SynopsisRichard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief a rational one, or one which the believer is justified in holding? He maps the various totally different and purportedly rival accounts that philosophers give of epistemic justification (''internalist'' and ''externalist''), and argues that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes (as most epistemologists do not) between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation) -- both internalist and externalist. He argus that most kinds of justification are worth having because (for different reasons) indicative of truth. However, it is only justification of intermalist kinds that can guide a believer''s actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true: every proposition h
Trade ReviewReaders of Swinburne's rewarding book will get a glimpse from the inside of how a sophisticated doxastic foundationalist understands epistemic justification ... careful and meticulous exposition. * The Philosophical Quarterly *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Theory of Synchronic Justification ; 2. Belief ; 3. Probability ; 4. The Criteria of Logical Probability ; 5. Basicality ; 6. The Value of Synchronic Justification ; 7. The Value of Diachronic Justification ; 8. Knowledge ; Appendix: Predictivism, Additional Notes, Index
