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Concept
Justification (epistemology)
Summary
Justification (also called epistemic justification) is the property of belief that qualifies it as knowledge rather than mere opinion. Epistemology is the study of reasons that someone holds a rationally admissible belief (although the term is also sometimes applied to other propositional attitudes such as doubt). Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of warrant (a proper justification for holding a belief), knowledge, rationality, and probability, among others.
Debates surrounding epistemic justification often involve the structure of justification, including whether there are foundational justified beliefs or whether mere coherence is sufficient for a system of beliefs to qualify as justified. Another major subject of debate is the sources of justification, which might include perceptual experience (the evidence of the senses), reason, and authoritative testimony, among others.
"Justification" involves the reasons why someone holds a belief that one should hold based on one's current evidence. Justification is a property of beliefs insofar as they are held blamelessly. In other words, a justified belief is a belief that a person is entitled to hold.
Many philosophers from Plato onward have treated "justified true belief" (JTB) as constituting knowledge. It is particularly associated with a theory discussed in his dialogues Meno and Theaetetus. While in fact Plato seems to disavow justified true belief as constituting knowledge at the end of Theaetetus, the claim that Plato unquestioningly accepted this view of knowledge stuck until the proposal of the Gettier problem.
The subject of justification has played a major role in the value of knowledge as "justified true belief". Some contemporary epistemologists, such as Jonathan Kvanvig assert that justification isn't necessary in getting to the truth and avoiding errors. Kvanvig attempts to show that knowledge is no more valuable than true belief, and in the process dismissed the necessity of justification due to justification not being connected to the truth.
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