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INFINITISM, SKEPTICISM, AND THE REGRESS PROBLEM A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Carmen Fosner May 2018 Examining Committee Members: Gerald Vision, Advisory Chair, Temple University Philosophy Department Miriam Solomon, Temple University Philosophy Department Espen Hammer, Temple University Philosophy Department Peter Baumann, External Member, Swarthmore College ABSTRACT It is a common view that rationally held beliefs require reasons sufficient to justify them. One debate about the nature of justification is defined by the Regress Problem, which offers four different accounts of the structure of sufficient reasons. I argue against the more popular foundationalist and coherentist responses to the problem, contending that infinitism, (the view that the structure of justification-conferring reasons supporting a belief is endless), can provide a viable theory of adequate justification. The version of infinitism I defend entails adopting an infinitist approach to propositional justification combined with a contextualist approach to doxastic justification. After the details of the foundationalist and coherentist solutions are discussed, I evaluate various versions of contextualism and describe how these different formulations can influence a response to the Regress Problem. To conclude, I articulate a contextualist-infinitist solution to the Regress Problem, arguing that this solution not only avoids the problems presented by foundationalism and coherentism, but also that it provides a viable account of how context-based factors influence knowledge claims by affecting our standards for justification. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCING THE REGRESS PROBLEM.............................................................1 2. NON-INFERENTIALITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF FOUNDATIONALISM ...............................................................................................34 3. COHERENTISM AS A FORM OF FOUNDATIONALISM .....................................60 4. FORMS OF INFINITE JUSTIFICATION ..................................................................94 5. CONTEXTUALISM AND JUSTIFICATION ..........................................................121 6. CONTEXTUALIST INFINITISM ............................................................................150 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................181 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. The Foundationalist Structure of Justification………………….……………….62 2. The Coherentist Structure of Justification …..………………………..…..……. 63 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING THE REGRESS PROBLEM Justification is typically considered to be a necessary condition for knowledge yet also the most opaque and controversial of the three components, justification, truth, and belief, that make up the standard account. The reason for this assessment has been due in part to the impact of the Regress Problem in traditional epistemology. This is a problem that continues to be significant because it raises a concern about our ability to have knowledge by challenging the possibility that there can be adequate justification for our beliefs. As this chapter will show, there have been many attempts to solve this problem, but as of now no general consensus exists about the correct solution. Put briefly, the Regress Problem is a dispute over the structure of justification, specifically the question of how to understand the configuration of reasons that justify our beliefs. When we try to answer this question, the regress inherent in the attempt to justify beliefs appears. If we seek justification for a particular belief, we’re looking for a supporting reason for thinking it to be true. This supporting reason in turn requires a reason of its own to justify our accepting it as well, and for all inferentially held beliefs this pattern continues, seemingly without end. Thus, it appears that the justification for any belief consists of a vicious infinite regress of reasons. This is a problematic conclusion since it leaves us with a theory of knowledge according to which no belief can ever be adequately justified. However, there are four possible solutions to this problem: (1) we can never have sufficient justification for our beliefs and hence lack knowledge (skepticism), (2) our beliefs can still be justified because the infinite regress of reasons is 1 non-vicious (infinitism), (3) there are non-inferential basic beliefs that justify all further justified beliefs (foundationalism), or (4) our beliefs are mutually supported and justified as a whole because they form a coherent system (coherentism). The main concern raised by this problem is that without the support of a proper theory of the structure of justification, (i.e., one that can successfully respond to the Regress Problem), the only possible outcome will be skepticism about justification. Such a result is problematic for the traditional analysis of knowledge, the view that knowledge consists of justified, true beliefs, (hereafter the JTB account), for if skepticism is true and we have no adequate account of justification, it follows that we also cannot have an adequate account of knowledge. The consequence of this conclusion is either that it is impossible for us to have any knowledge whatsoever, or if we do know things, we can never know what it is that we know since we cannot be sure which of our beliefs are justified. Either result is disastrous for any non-skeptical account that requires justification as a necessary condition for knowledge, which makes the Regress Problem of acute significance for anyone attempting to defend a non-skeptical epistemology using the JTB account. In light of this problem, as things currently stand the burden lies with the traditional epistemologist to come up with some way of combating the skeptic’s conclusion. While there is still no consensus on just how to solve this problem, foundationalism and coherentism are typically viewed as the two viable contenders. And instead of considering infinitism, an increasingly popular alternative response for those unsatisfied with the foundationalist and coherentist solutions to the Regress Problem has 2 been to turn away from the JTB account altogether and counter skepticism with an account of knowledge outside of traditional epistemology, typically with a theory that removes justification as a necessary condition for knowledge and because of this, rejects the Regress Problem. However, despite the difficulty of solving this problem, I think it is premature to abandon the traditional JTB analysis altogether, and the goal of this chapter is to provide some reasons that explain why this pursuit is worthwhile. Section 1 accounts for why the Regress Problem has remained unanswered by discussing several historical responses to it and how these various approaches have failed to establish a consensus about the correct solution. Section 2 then discusses the nature of justification and its connection to skepticism in more detail, offering an overview of the features that an adequate theory of justification would need to have in order to combat skepticism. What I hope to show by the end of the chapter is that the Regress Problem is still a pressing concern that it is relevant to epistemology today, that there is still room for debate over how to best deal with it, and in light of this, that further exploration of a solution to the Regress Problem will need to focus on the overlooked and under-discussed infinitist account. Section 1: The Epistemic Regress through History Richard Rorty once recommended that we view the history of philosophy as a continual, never-ending dialogue carried out among those who share the same background knowledge and who are pursuing answers to or refinements of a set of 3 questions that has been part of this dialogue for a long time. According to Rorty, this perpetual dialogue among philosophers defines what philosophers do: Philosophers are philosophers not because they have common aims and interests (they don’t), or common methods (they don’t), or agree to discuss a common set of problems (they don’t), or are endowed with common faculties (they aren’t), but simply and solely because they are taking part in a single continuing conversation. (2008, p. 411) Keeping Rorty’s account of philosophical progress in mind, the rest of this section will consider past prominent theories of knowledge as part of a dialogue in the history of epistemology, building upon each other through various refinements of theories of the nature of justification and also the concern over the possibility that justified beliefs are possible despite the skeptic’s claims to the contrary. The section will be divided into subsections based on divisions already commonly used to mark different eras in the history of philosophy that are chosen here based on shifts in responses to the Regress Problem or, in Rorty’s terms, shifts in the dialogue philosophers throughout history have engaged in over the nature of justification. The goal here is to review accounts in the canon about issues relating to the structure of justification and the Regress Problem in an attempt
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