Epistemic Justification and Normativity

Abstract

Abstract Is epistemic justification normative? Discusses four ways of justifying a positive answer, none of which the writer thinks succeed: epistemic justification is normative because it is (1) analogous to moral normativity, (2) a matter of following rules; (3) a matter of trying to achieve certain goals; and (4) analyzable in terms of blame and praise. The chief problem of explaining what makes epistemic justification normative is, according to the writer, cognitivism: the view that epistemic judgments describe objective features of the world. If cognitivism in epistemology is correct, it is hard to understand why epistemic judgments should be different from nonnormative judgments that describe objective reality.

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