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Paper   IPM / Philosophy / 14790
School of Analytic Philosophy
  Title:   A dispositional analysis of propositional and doxastic justification
  Author(s):  H. Vahid
  Status:   Published
  Journal: Philosophical Studies
  Vol.:  173
  Year:  2016
  Pages:   3133-3152
  Supported by:  IPM
  Abstract:
An important question in epistemology concerns how the two species of justification, propositional and doxastic justification, are related to one another. According to the received view, basing one’s belief p on the grounds that provide propositional justification to believe p is sufficient for the belief to be doxastically justified. In a recent paper, however, John Turri has suggested that we should reverse the direction of explanation. In this paper, I propose to see the debate in a new light by suggesting that the best way to understand the relationship between these species of justification is by viewing propositional justification as an (epistemic) dispositional property that a subject can have with doxastic justification as its manifestation. I show how the debate in metaphysics over the question of how disposition statements should be analyzed runs parallel to the epistemological debate, and bring some of the results in the dispositions debate to bear on the epistemological question. I end by offering some tentative remarks regarding the order of priority of these two species of justification.

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