Lifeworld Coherentism and Tradition-Based Perspectivalism: A First and Second-Order Proposal for the Justification of Empirical Beliefs

Philosophia 52 (4):1043-1062 (2024)
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Abstract

This article intervenes in the debate over the noetic structure of empirical beliefs required for epistemic justification, focusing on the choice between internalist foundationalism and coherentism. Analysing the link between noetic structure and the introspective accessibility of essential justifiers, I argue that coherentism has greater doxastic plausibility than foundationalism. To deepen my account, I constructively develop ideas from the late-period Edmund Husserl to propose a first-order epistemological theory that I term ‘Lifeworld Coherentism’. I argue that, especially through the idea of the epistemic agent’s ‘doxic horizon’, this theory can overcome some of the worries surrounding the introspective awareness of belief coherence. Finally, in order to extend the second-order dimension of the debate, I introduce ‘Tradition-Based Perspectivalism’, a meta-epistemological theory that Erik Baldwin uses to address concerns about the social grounding of epistemic theorising. Though supportive of Baldwin’s reading of Alasdair MacIntyre on this point, I argue that Tradition-Based Perspectivalism is a better fit to Lifeworld Coherentism as a first-order theory than to his own preferred Proper Functionalism.

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Ramon Harvey
Cambridge Muslim College

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References found in this work

The inescapability of Gettier problems.Linda Zagzebski - 1994 - Philosophical Quarterly 44 (174):65-73.
Experience and Judgment.Edmund Husserl, L. Landgrebe, J. S. Churchill & K. Ameriks - 1973 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 39 (4):712-713.
Whose Justice? Which Rationality?Alasdair Macintyre - 1988 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (4):388-404.
Epistemic Akrasia.Declan Smithies - 2019 - In The Epistemic Role of Consciousness. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 284–311.

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