Theories of epistemic justification are commonly assessed by exploring their predictions about particular hypothetical cases—predictions as to whether justification is present or absent in this or that case. With a few exceptions, it is much less common for theories of epistemic justification to be assessed by exploring their predictions about logical principles. The exceptions are a handful of ‘closure’ principles, which have received a lot of attention, and which certain theories of justification are well known to invalidate. But these closure principles are only a small sample of the logical principles that we might consider. In this paper, I will outline four further logical principles that plausibly hold for justification and two which plausibly do not. While my primary aim is just to put these principles forward, I will use them to evaluate some different approaches to justification and (tentatively) conclude that a ‘normic’ theory of justification best captures its logic.
CITATION STYLE
Smith, M. (2018). The logic of epistemic justification. Synthese, 195(9), 3857–3875. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1422-z
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