Evidentialism is a theory of justification according to which believing proposition p is justified for some agent S at time t iff S 's total evidence at t supports p; that, in short, the justified attitude toward a proposition, be it belief, disbelief, or suspension of judgment, is the one that fits the evidence. Generally, the above formulation takes for granted what is sometimes referred to as the basing condition, which requires that S believe p on the basis of the evidence that supports p. Theory of justification is that part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of statements and beliefs. ... Look up belief on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Proposition is a term used in logic to describe the content of assertions. ... A watch Attempting to understand time has long been a prime occupation for philosophers, scientists and artists. ... ↔ ⇔ ≡ For other possible meanings of iff, see IFF. In mathematics, philosophy, logic and technical fields that depend on them, iff is used as an abbreviation for if and only if. Common alternative phrases to iff or if and only if include Q is necessary and sufficient for P and P...

Criticisms of evidentialism

Critics of evidentialism sometimes reject the claim that a belief is justified only if one's evidence supports that belief. A typical counterexample goes like this. Suppose, for example, that Babe Ruth approaches the batter's box believing that he will hit a home run despite his current drunkenness and overall decline in performance in recent games. He realizes that, however unlikely it is that his luck will change, it would increase his chances of hitting a home run if he maintains a confident attitude. In these circumstances, critics of evidentialism argue that his belief that p = Babe Ruth hit a home run is justified, even though his evidence does not support this belief. George Herman Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), better known as Babe Ruth, also commonly known by the nicknames The Bambino and The Sultan of Swat, was an American baseball player and United States national icon. ... In baseball, softball, and similar sports and games, the batters box is the place where the batter stands when ready to receive a pitch from the pitcher. ... For other uses of the phrase see Home run (disambiguation) In baseball, a home run is a base hit in which the batter is able to circle all the bases, ending at home plate and scoring a run himself (along with a run for each runner who was already on... Drunkenness, in its most common usage, is the state of being intoxicated with alcohol (i. ... Baseball is a team sport in which a player on one team (the pitcher) attempts to throw a hard, fist-sized ball past a player on the other team (the batter), who attempts to hit the baseball with a tapered, smooth cylinder called a bat. ...

Evidentialists may respond to this criticism by forming a distinction between pragmatic or prudential justification and epistemic justification. In Babe Ruth's case, it is pragmatically justified that he believe p, but it is nevertheless epistemically unjustified: Though the belief may be justified for the purpose of promoting some other goal (a successful at bat, in Ruth's case), it is not justified relative to the purely epistemic goal of having beliefs that are most likely to be true. Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ...

Evidentialism has also been challenged on the basis of another kind of example (see Keith DeRose, "Ought We to Follow Our Evidence," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000): 697-706; at pp. 703-706): skeptical hypotheses. It can seem that certain skeptical hypotheses -- like that one is bodiless brain-in-vat hooked up to a supercomputer that sees to it that one receives the appropriate sensory input -- can fit one's relevant evidence as well as does the "real world hypothesis." But are we to believe these skeptical hypotheses are false, and that some real world hypothesis is true, only to the (seemingly slight or non-existent) extent that our relevant evidence favors our belief in a real world over skeptical hypotheses? DeRose suggests that, so far from being epistimically justified, the poor soul who followed her evidence in this case, and consequently failed to believe firmly in a real world, would be a prime case of an irrational believer. But others may be willing, or even happy, to follow evidentialism to a radical skeptical conclusion.

A similar response follows the criticism that evidentialism implies all faith based beliefs are unjustified. For example, fideism claims that evidence is irrelevant to religious beliefs and that attempts to justify religious beliefs in such a way are misguided. Superficially, fideism and evidentialism have mutually exclusive takes on religious beliefs, but evidentialists use the term "justification" in a much weaker sense than the one in which fideists most likely use it. Evidentialism merely defines the epistemic condition of a belief, an issue towards which fideists would most likely be apathetic. The word faith has various uses; its central meaning is similar to belief, trust or confidence, but unlike these terms, faith tends to imply a transpersonal rather than interpersonal relationship – with God or a higher power. ... In Christian theology, fideism is any of a number of positions. ...

Likewise, some say that the human mind is not naturally inclined to form beliefs based on evidence, viz. cognitive dissonance. While this may be the case, evidentialists admit, evidentialism is only meant to separate justified beliefs from unjustified beliefs. One can believe that evidentialism is true yet still maintain that the human mind is not naturally inclined to form beliefs based on evidence. He would simply have to conclude that the mind is not naturally inclined to form justified beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency. ...

The infinite regress argument

Evidentialism also faces a challenge from the infinite regress argument. This argument begins with the observation that, normally, one's supporting evidence for a belief consists of other beliefs. But it seems that these other beliefs can do the job of justifying only if they themselves are already justified. And evidentialism demands that these supporting beliefs be justified by still further evidence if they are to be justified themselves. But this same reasoning would apply to the new, deeper level of supporting beliefs: they can only justify if they're themselves justified, and evidentialism therefore demands an even deeper level of supporting belief. And so on. According to this argument, a justified belief requires an endless supply of reasons. Most philosophers agree that this is an absurd conclusion. A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ...

In general, responses to this argument can be classified in the following ways:

Foundationalism: There exist beliefs that are justified, but not on the basis of any other beliefs, called basic beliefs, and these beliefs are the foundation upon which all other justified beliefs rest. ... In foundationalism, basic beliefs (also commonly called foundational beliefs) are the axioms of a belief system. ...

Coherentism: Justified beliefs are all evidentially supported by other beliefs, but an infinite set of beliefs is not generated, because the chains of evidential support among beliefs is allowed to move in a circle. On the resulting picture, a person's belief is justified when it fits together with the person's other beliefs in a coherent way in which the person's various beliefs mutually support one another. ...

Skepticism: There cannot be any justified beliefs. The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...

Aside from these responses, some philosophers have said that evidential chains terminate in beliefs that are not justified. Others have said that, indeed, there can exist infinite chains of reasons.

Of the main responses, coherentism and skepticism are clearly consistent with evidentialism. Coherentism allows evidential support for all of our justified beliefs in the face of the regress argument by allowing for circular chains of evidential support among beliefs. And the skeptic here is utilizing an evidentialist demand to arrive at her skeptical conclusion.

But because the resulting skepticism is so sweeping and devastating, and because so many reject the legitimacy of the circular reasoning embraced by the coherentist, foundationalism is the favored response of many philosophers to the regress argument. And foundationalism is not so clearly consistent with evidentialism. At first glance, at least, the "basic" beliefs of the foundationalist would appear to be counterexamples to the evidentialist's thesis, in that they are justified beliefs that are not rational because they are supported by deeper evidence.

Non-evidentialist theories of knowledge and justification

Many contemporary epistemologists reject the view that evidential support is the whole story about the justification of beliefs. While no sensible epistemologists generally urge people to disregard their evidence when forming beliefs, many believe that a more complete theory would introduce considerations about the processes that intitiate and sustain beliefs. An example of one such theory is reliabilism. The most influential proponent of reliabilism is Alvin Goldman. According to a crude form of reliabilism, S is justified in believing p if and only if S 's belief in p is caused by a reliable process -- a process that generally leads to true beliefs. Some of these reliable processes may require the processing of evidence; many others won't. So evidentialism, on which the justification of a belief always turns completely on the issue of the belief's evidential support, is false. Likewise, evidentialism will be rejected by more sophisticated versions of reliabilism, some of which will allow evidence an important but limited role, as opposed to the all-encompassing role assigned to it by evidentialism. Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief (as well as other varieties of so-called positive epistemic status). ... Alvin Ira Goldman (born 1938) is a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. ...

Other non-evidentialist theories include: the Causal Theory, according to which S knows p iff S 's belief in p is causally connected in an appropriate way with S 's believing p; and Robert Nozick's Truth Tracking Theory, according to which S knows p iff (i) p is true, (ii) S believes p, (iii) S 's attitude toward p tracks the truth value of p in that, when p is not true, S does not believe p and when p is true, S does believe p. Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. ...

Another alternative perspective, promoted by David Hume's 18th Century opponent, Thomas Reid, and perhaps hinted at by Hume himself, at least in some moods (though this is a very controversial issue in interpreting Hume), has it that some of our "natural" beliefs -- beliefs we are led to form by natural features of the human constitution -- have what can be called an "innocent-until-proven-guilty" status. Contrary to evidentialism, they can be justified in the absence of any effective evidence that supports them. They are justified just so long as one doesn't have good reason to think them false.

A very important and provocative new account of the extent of our evidence is Timothy Williamson's claim that E=K: One's evidence is what one knows. (See Williamson's immensely important book, Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford UP, 2000).) Going by the "letter of the law," Williamson's resulting theory is not contrary to, but is rather an instance of, evidentialism. By allowing our evidence to emcompass everything we know, Williamson is able to give thoroughly evidentialist accounts of many important epistemological concepts. But, traditionally, evidentialists have presupposed much more restrictive accounts of what our evidence is. Thus, Williamson's theory is opposed to the spirit of much traditional evidentialism. However, Williamson's work may point to a quite general way to modify traditional evidentialism to make it better able to meet the challenges it faces: Whether or not one goes so far as to accept that E=K, broadening one's view of what comprises our evidence may provide a way to address many of the objections to evidentialism, especially to those disinclined to accept skeptical consequences of a view.