Re: Criticism and explanation versus justification

On 2 Jan 2013, at 13:26, Alan Forrester <alanmichaelforrester-gM/[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On 2 Jan 2013, at 01:53, David Deutsch <david.deutsch-LR/[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> On 1 Jan 2013, at 19:09, Alan Forrester <[email protected]> wrote:

[...]

>>> I think the logic of the anti-foundational argument in FoR implies that justification should be totally removed from all of our ideas about knowledge root and branch.

I agree that it implies it. And I also agree that in FoR I didn't make that case strongly enough.

But making that case strongly and comprehensively is a major theme of BoI.

>>> I don't think it would be necessary to make many changes to the ideas explained in David's books as a result of making that change. Many of the instances of the word 'justification' could be replaced with 'explanation' and the argument would be non-justificationist. Some instances of 'justification' in the books are in scare quotes and so they would remain the same since they are compatible with the complete rejection of justificationism. There is one instance that I know of that would have to be completely deleted. (The Hermes quote from BoI you posted in another message.)
>> 
>> The only places in BoI where justification is mentioned are:
>> 
>> (1) Many places where I'm giving arguments against justificationism.
>> 
>> (2) pp210-11, 328 and 395 where it's a different meaning of the verb 'to justify'

[...]

>> (3) Only one other place: p226, the Hermes quote I think you're referring to: "But, in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation to other beliefs, and even then only fallibly." But there it is referring to deduction. Beliefs can be deductively entailed by other beliefs.
>> 
>> Perhaps I should have said that. But in any case, I don't think it could possibly be mistaken for a claim that ideas can be "designated as true (or at least ‘probable’) by reference to some authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge" (which is what I call justificationism), could it? So what mistake could it be mistaken for?
> 
> One possible confusion if that sentence was taken in complete isolation from the rest of the book is the idea that you have some kind of proof that if you have an argument saying that idea A is a consequence of idea B that idea is justified in the problematic  sense by virtue of the laws of logic or something like that. Our knowledge of those laws and of other background assumptions used in an argument are all totally unjustified and so if you had been making that claim you would be wrong.

Exactly.

> Making the claim that you're a justificationist using one sentence that could be interpreted as justificationist if it was taken in isolation is a bad negative interpretation.

Indeed. And a bad argument, since that level of extreme reinterpretation could be used to reinterpret anything at all as something else.

> That interpretation doesn't make sense in the light of your condemnation of justificationism in the rest of the book.


Right. But notice that the interpretation of that remark as justificationist is not only inconsistent with the *rest* of the book. The remark is, in that very location, part of an anti-justificationist argument -- namely the very argument that you called (in this thread On 1 Jan 2013, at 21:00) the second of your "several criticisms of justificationism":

>>>> either you keep making justificationist arguments forever or you give up and use unjustified premises in which case your idea is unjustified and you get nothing from all this justification

That being so, what would be the benefit of completely deleting that passage from BoI as you advocate above?

-- David Deutsch











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