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A NOTE CONCERNING JUSTIFICATION AND ACCESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2013

Clayton Littlejohn
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Abstract

Certain combinations of attitudes are manifestly unreasonable. It is unreasonable to believe that dogs bark, for example, if one concedes that one has no justification to believe this. Why are the irrational combinations irrational? One suggestion is that these are attitudes that a subject cannot have justification to have. If this is right, we can test claims about the structure of propositional justification by relying on our observations about which combinations of attitudes constitute Moorean absurd pairs. In a recent defense of access internalism, Smithies argues that only access internalism can explain why various combinations of attitude are irrational. In this paper, I shall argue that access internalism cannot explain the relevant data. Reflection on Moore's Paradox will not tell us much of anything about propositional justification and cannot support access internalism.

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Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 369 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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