Do We Have to Know Why We Are Justified in Our Beliefs?

Abstract

Many hundreds of essays have been written about the problem of how to justify various generally held beliefs, such as the belief in the existence of an external world, the belief that the universe did not spring into being just five minutes ago replete with evidence seeming to indicate a much older universe, the belief in the validity of inductive reasoning, the belief that others have a mind and so on. There is however an important problem concerning each one of these problems which, has received very little attention in recent years. It is the problem why is it that people's belief in the various propositions just mentioned is independent of whether or not they are able to justify it. Let me consider the belief in other minds as an example which will illustrate the general attitude prevailing to all the beliefs referred to. There are hardly any solipsists in the world. Many intelligent people who are not philosophers could not if challenged give a defence of their belief in the existence of other minds. Their typical reaction would be that they have a very strong conviction that others cannot be merely robots, that they surely have a mind, but when it comes to justification not only are they at a loss as to how to construct one but will admit that some arguments designed to justify this belief they have heard about did not even sound intelligible to them. But even philosophers who have spent a good deal of effort to justify a belief in the mindedness of others do not seem to regard their justification as a precondition for their belief. Ask any philosopher who claims to have constructed a sound argument supporting his belief that solipsism is false, what he would do if it were conclusively demonstrated to him that his argument was unsound. Now while philosophers may very rarely admit in any particular case that their arguments are actually fallacious, they all eagerly profess to be fallible and openminded and agree that any of their arguments could in principle be proven wrong and in that case they would withdraw them.