My interpretation is that J is not questioning whether global doubt is incoherent, but is asking why grammar should be considered sufficient to settle the issue. In other words, what explains why grammar imposes the limits it does? — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, though at this point I do wish we had a different term than "grammar," since grammar has such a specific meaning within language. Obviously none of us is saying that English grammar can settle philosophical questions. What sort of grammar, then, are we referencing? I tend to translate it as "mutual conceptual coherence," but perhaps there are other ways.

Grammar is the surface expression of deeper constraints built into what it means to doubt, inquire, and correct at all. — Sam26

A good insight, and a potential answer to the question raised above. Again, it allows us to turn away from the idea that language is actually the issue. Doubt and inquiry are practices, not units of language.

global doubt misfires because it cancels the very conditions that make doubt an intelligible, or an answerable activity — Sam26

Yes. And I'm focusing on these "very conditions" -- how should we describe them? What ontological commitments are involved, exactly? It sounds like all three of us see the same basic picture, but we're each working to give the most perspicuous account of what we see. I may be over-obsessing about the idea of "distinguishing appearance from reality," but is this really what we must claim for justificatory practices? To ask it differently: Could we instead claim that we distinguish truth from opinion? Is our warrant for talking about truth any stronger than our warrant for talking about reality? It's a genuine question; I'm not sure.

I feel like I keep repeating myself. When I say, “the conditions that make doubt intelligible,” I mean the basic setup that makes checking and being checked possible. For any practice of inquiry to work, it has to treat some outcomes as settled and others not. Otherwise “I doubt,” “I tested,” and “I corrected myself” become empty statements.

We don’t have to start with the heavy phrase “appearance vs reality.” We can start with something leaner. For instance, settled vs unsettled, correct vs incorrect, passes the check vs fails the check. Those distinctions are already enough to rule out global doubt, because global doubt tries to remove the very idea that anything could ever count as settled.

“Truth vs opinion” can express the same structure, but only if truth means “what would be correct even if no one endorsed it.” If “truth just means “what our group happens to treat as correct,” then the difference between error and correction disappears into sociology. So, the real commitment isn’t a grand metaphysics of Reality with a capital R, it’s the thinner claim that correctness answers to something beyond mere endorsement. Call that truth, call it reality, call it constraint, it’s the same role.

I believe that’s the ontological answer here, not a theory of what exists, but the insistence that inquiry isn’t just opinion-management, it’s answerable to what settles these epistemological questions.

I agree with you, though many would disagree. I was curious where you would fall on the question. Sounds like we broadly agree on these issues. — Esse Quam Videri

Even if you were omniscient someone would disagree. It means nothing, don't you think?

Continuing with paper...
Post #13

8. Broader Consequences for Epistemic Life Today

The refinement offered by JTB+U is not meant to remain at the level of conceptual reconstruction. Its point is to clarify how our epistemic practices actually work, and to make visible the distinctions that are now repeatedly blurred. In many contemporary settings, the appearance of support is treated as if it were justification, fluency is treated as if it were understanding, and conviction is treated as if it were certainty. The result is not merely disagreement. It is a weakening of the grammar of knowledge, a drift in the very criteria by which we distinguish knowing from persuading, and truth from mere plausibility.

One consequence of the framework is that it restores the place of justification as a public practice. When justification is treated as something private, or as an inner feeling of confidence, the discipline of epistemic life collapses into rhetoric. JTB+U makes explicit that justification depends on shared criteria, on the ability to locate a belief within an established route of support, and on the willingness to submit that standing to correction. This is why the language-games of knowledge depend on practices of challenge and withdrawal. A belief that cannot be corrected within a practice is not thereby strengthened. It is severed from the ordinary conditions under which justification has its point.

A second consequence is that the model clarifies the role of testimony in a world saturated with information. Testimony is not a lesser route. It is among the most common routes in ordinary life. Yet the present environment often treats testimony as interchangeable with assertion, as if the mere existence of a claim in circulation were enough to give it standing. JTB+U makes clear that testimony has standing only within the practices that grant it, and that this standing depends on criteria that are often ignored in modern informational contexts. When those criteria are weakened, testimony does not disappear. It becomes unstable, and epistemic life becomes susceptible to persuasion that imitates the surface of justification.

A third consequence concerns the probabilistic character of justification. Much of what we count as knowledge is not secured by absolute certainty. Our justificatory practices are often graded, and they frequently operate under conditions of limited information. This is not an embarrassment to epistemology. It is part of the grammar of our epistemic life. The mistake is to treat this fallibility as if it implied that knowledge is impossible, or that the classical model must be abandoned. JTB+U instead clarifies how fallibility and knowledge coexist. We can have knowledge without having what philosophers sometimes treat as conclusive proof, because the standing required for knowledge is determined within a practice, under disciplined constraints, against a stable background of bedrock certainties.

This is also where the distinction between the different senses of certainty matters. Subjective certainty is conviction. It can be intense, and it can be sincere, yet it does not settle anything about truth. Hinge certainty is bedrock, it stands fast and makes doubt possible, yet it is not knowledge. Epistemic certainty is the kind of stability a belief can have within a practice of justification, where the belief is resistant to relevant challenge and supported in the way the practice requires. Absolute certainty belongs to logic and necessity. Modern discourse often collapses these into one undifferentiated notion of certainty, and the collapse produces confusion. Conviction is treated as evidence. Bedrock is treated as dogma. Logical necessity is treated as a demand for knowledge. JTB+U separates these senses and returns each to its proper use.

A further consequence is that the framework explains why disagreement can persist even among sincere and competent thinkers. Disagreements are not always disputes over evidence. They can arise from differences in the background against which evidence is assessed, from differences in how concepts are being used, and from differences in which defeaters are treated as relevant. None of this makes truth relative. It shows that our practices of justification are complex and that the stability of knowledge depends on more than the production of arguments. When we recognize this, we are less tempted to treat disagreement as evidence of irrationality, and more able to locate what is actually at issue.

Finally, the framework provides a disciplined response to the current pressure to treat epistemic life as a contest of narratives. Persuasion is not the same as justification. A persuasive claim can be memorable, emotionally forceful, and socially reinforced, while still lacking standing within a practice of justification. JTB+U gives us a way to say this without moralizing. It identifies where the grammar breaks down. The guardrails make the point concrete. No False Grounds blocks claims whose support depends on what is not so. Practice Safety blocks claims that succeed only by coincidence or rhetorical timing. Defeater Screening blocks claims that remain compelling only because relevant challenges have been excluded or ignored.

Wittgenstein’s distinction between criteria and mere signs is useful here. Many things accompany knowledge: confidence, fluency, repetition, even social approval. Yet these are not what justify a claim. They are at best symptoms, and often only disguises. The criteria for knowledge belong to the practice: the routes by which justification is given, the guardrails that discipline it, and the ways a claim can be corrected, withdrawn, or defended when challenged. When those criteria are replaced by signs, epistemic life becomes vulnerable to persuasion that imitates the surface of justification.

In this sense, the account is realist without dogmatism. It affirms truth as the success condition. It affirms the public character of justification. It affirms the necessity of bedrock certainties without treating them as items of knowledge. It affirms fallibility without conceding skepticism. It also encourages a kind of epistemic humility that is not a retreat from truth but an acknowledgement of the limits built into our practices. The point is not that we should doubt everything. The point is that we should recognize what must stand fast for justification to function, and then take seriously the discipline by which beliefs earn their standing as knowledge within the language-games we share.

Even if you were omniscient someone would disagree. It means nothing, don't you think? — Sam26

Ha. Indeed. I try to see disagreement as an opportunity to learn something new or refine what I already know, hence my curiosity.

I basically agree with 's reply here. There is a minimal metaphysical commitment that I would say is unavoidable; namely, that there is something that makes judgments true or false, independently of our taking them to be so. That’s enough metaphysics to ground inquiry — and no more than that.

I'm curious. What's fueling your "obsession" with the metaphysical question? Do you suspect that there is more to it than this?

Continuing with paper...
Post #14

9. Objections and Stress Tests

Before closing, it is worth testing the framework against a few cases that are often used to pressure classical accounts of knowledge. The point is not to chase intuitions, but to show how the routes and guardrails clarify why some beliefs have the standing required for knowledge and why others do not, even when the surface looks similar.

Fake barn environment. Consider the case in which a person looks at what appears to be a barn, forms the belief “that is a barn,” and happens to be looking at the only real barn in an area filled with convincing façades. The belief is true, and from the person’s point of view the perceptual situation seems ordinary. Yet the belief lacks the standing of knowledge. JTB+U does not need a new condition to explain this. The belief proceeds through sensory experience, but the environment has altered the standing of that route. Practice Safety is decisive. In a setting saturated with decoys, the belief would easily have been false under nearby variations that the practice treats as relevant. The problem is not that perception stops functioning, but that the ordinary stability required for knowledge is not present. Defeater Screening also matters. The relevant defeater is built into the environment itself, namely that many barn-like objects are not barns. The point is not what the person privately considered, but what standing the belief has within a practice once that defeater is in play.

Testimony under distorted informational conditions. A second pressure point concerns testimony in an environment where repetition is treated as standing. Here the route is still testimony, but testimony has standing only within practices that supply criteria of credibility, provenance, and correction. No False Grounds blocks a common failure. Testimony can look supportive while resting on fabricated reports, altered media, or untraceable sources. A belief placed on such grounds can be compelling and socially reinforced, yet the support is defective at the point where the practice treats the defect as disqualifying. Practice Safety and Defeater Screening complete the diagnosis. A claim can be true by coincidence and widely repeated, while remaining unstable under ordinary informational variation. A claim can also remain persuasive only because relevant challenges are excluded rather than addressed. In either case, what is missing is not sincerity or intensity of conviction, but the standing a belief must have within a practice of justification to count as knowledge.

Human and AI hybrid cases. A third test concerns cases in which a person uses an artificial system as an aid. The temptation is to treat fluent output as knowledge, or to treat the user as having knowledge simply by receiving an answer. The framework clarifies the difference. A person can acquire knowledge with the help of AI only if the belief formed on the basis of the output is placed within a practice of justification that satisfies the guardrails. No False Grounds matters because an output can include invented citations or a false claim doing essential work. Practice Safety matters because slight prompt changes can produce incompatible outputs, which signals instability. Defeater Screening matters because relevant counter-considerations can be present and must be addressed within the practice if the belief is to have standing. This also shows the proper role of understanding. If the output is treated as a substitute for conceptual competence, then the belief can have the appearance of support while lacking the internal structure required for genuine justification. AI can be a powerful instrument within human epistemic life, but that does not collapse the distinction between producing true sentences and knowing.

What these tests show. These cases do not require a patch to JTB. They show that when justification is treated as a public practice with disciplined constraints, the difference between knowledge and lucky success is not mysterious. Truth remains the success condition. What varies is the standing of a belief within a practice, and that standing depends on the routes by which it is supported and on the guardrails that discipline that support. In this way, JTB+U does not replace the classical model. It clarifies what the model already presupposes when we speak carefully about what it is to know.

I basically agree with ↪Sam26 's reply here. There is a minimal metaphysical commitment that I would say is unavoidable; namely, that there is something that makes judgments true or false, independently of our taking them to be so. That’s enough metaphysics to ground inquiry — and no more than that.

I'm curious. What's fueling your "obsession" with the metaphysical question? Do you suspect that there is more to it than this? — Esse Quam Videri

On the minimal commitment, yes, I agree that it can ground inquiry. But are you also saying that philosophy can't or shouldn't be asking about what the "something" is that makes judgments true or false?

My perhaps obsessive concern with the appearance/reality question springs from my dislike of the term "reality" in philosophy. It's not that I think there's "more to it than this," but the opposite: I think there's less to it. I don't think we should say that epistemic justification can show us what is "real" -- though see @Sam26's point above, about how "truth," "reality" and "constraint" are all aiming at the same role in this discussion. Which is part of why I try to avoid "reality" as a term. I don't think it does much independent work. And at worst, it can blur the distinction between questions about being, and questions about thinking.

Which is part of why I try to avoid "reality" as a term. I don't think it does much independent work. And at worst, it can blur the distinction between questions about being, and questions about thinking. — J

That's a fair worry. Like you I would resist any attempt to blur this distinction, but I would equally resist any attempt to detach truth from reality. If truth were nothing more than coherence of belief, stability within practice or endorsement by a community then the distinction between truth and opinion, or error and disagreement would collapse. I would argue that the normativity of truth requires that claims are answerable to something that is not exhausted by belief, endorsement or correct usage. As @sam26 said, this "something" doesn't have to be a full-blown metaphysical picture of Reality with a capital-R, but it does have to be robust enough to make sense of correction, learning, discovery and the possibility of being wrong.

Thoughts?

Continuing with the final post of the paper.
Post #15

10. Conclusion

The classical model of knowledge as justified true belief remains a sound starting point, not because it answers every philosophical worry, but because it captures the grammar of our ordinary epistemic life. When we call something knowledge, we are not merely reporting a psychological state of conviction. We are placing a belief within a practice of justification and marking that it has succeeded in being true. This is why the model has endured. It reflects what we already do when we distinguish between mere opinion and beliefs that genuinely have standing.

The refinements developed here do not replace that model; they make explicit what the classical formulation leaves implicit. Justification does not operate in isolation. It functions within shared language-games and presupposes a background of bedrock certainties that stand fast for us. These certainties are not items of knowledge, and they are not established by further justification. They are foundational in a non-epistemic sense. They set the conditions under which doubting, checking, and justifying have their point. This is why the demand to justify everything does not express greater rigor. It reflects a misunderstanding of the role that what stands fast plays in our epistemic life.

Understanding, likewise, is not an optional addition to justification; it is internal to it. To justify a belief is to use the relevant concepts correctly within a practice, to move competently among their connections, and to recognize what counts as correction and withdrawal when the practice requires it. The beetle in the box makes the point vivid. If we treat understanding as an inward item, something to which one privately points as the basis of epistemic standing, we detach justification from the criteria that give it life. We do not strengthen knowledge by relocating its basis to the private interior. We dissolve the conditions under which the concept of knowledge functions at all.

These clarifications also reposition the role of Gettier in epistemology. Once justification is understood as a standing within an epistemic practice, disciplined by criteria of correct use and constrained by what stands fast, Gettier-style cases lose their supposed significance. They do not show that the classical model is inadequate, but that many discussions of Gettier rely on a conception of justification that fails to reflect how our epistemic practices actually operate.

To make these points concrete, I distinguished five routes through which justification typically proceeds: testimony, logical inference, sensory experience, linguistic training, and pure logic in its boundary-setting role. These routes are not ranked by epistemic importance. They reflect the order in which justificatory support most commonly appears in our language-games. Alongside these routes, I described three guardrails that express the discipline internal to justification: No False Grounds, Practice Safety, and Defeater Screening. These guardrails do not add new conditions to knowledge. They clarify what it is for support to count as justificatory within a practice and help explain why some beliefs that look well supported fail to have the standing required for knowledge.

The structural parallel with Gödel reinforces the same lesson from a different angle. Gödel’s results show that formal systems have limits that arise from their internal structure, limits that are not defects but conditions of the system’s character. Wittgenstein’s remarks on hinges show that justificatory practices have limits as well. Not everything that makes justification possible can itself be justified. The parallel is structural, not mathematical, but it is instructive. It helps us see that the presence of limits does not entail skepticism. It marks the conditions under which epistemic life can proceed.

The application to artificial intelligence illustrates why these distinctions matter now. Artificial systems can produce true statements, sometimes with impressive reliability. Yet knowledge is not merely the production of truths. It is true belief that stands within a practice of justification, governed by routes, constrained by guardrails, and framed by what stands fast. AI systems can assist human knowers and function as powerful instruments within our epistemic practices. But to treat them as knowers is to blur the grammar of knowledge at exactly the point where clarity is most needed.

What emerges, then, is an account of knowledge that is realist without dogmatism. Truth remains the success condition. Justification remains a practice governed by shared criteria. Bedrock certainties stand fast without becoming items of knowledge. Understanding is not a private achievement but a competence displayed in use. The result is not a new theory erected on top of the classical model, but a clearer view of its working parts and of the background that makes them possible. If there is a practical upshot, it is this: when the appearance of support is everywhere, the task is to recover the discipline of justification and to keep the grammar of “know” clear enough to do its work.

If truth were nothing more than coherence of belief, stability within practice or endorsement by a community then the distinction between truth and opinion, or error and disagreement would collapse. — Esse Quam Videri

Completely agree.

something that is not exhausted by belief, endorsement or correct usage. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes again, and @Sam26 certainly sees it this way too.

this "something" doesn't have to be a full-blown metaphysical picture of Reality with a capital-R, but it does have to be robust enough to make sense of correction, learning, discovery and the possibility of being wrong. — Esse Quam Videri

This is where I've been focusing. I think we've come a long way in clarifying what the "something" needs to do, but questions may remain. At this point I want to give myself time to read Sam's paper in its entirety, as so far I've only been responding to the original summary and subsequent discussion. Then I may be better able to say more.

Do you think hinges are real features of our epistemic life, or are they a philosopher’s invention to stop regress. — Sam26

I do recognize we are surrounded by a great fabric without which nothing we do would be possible, but, outside of radical skepticism, I do not see anyone asking for justification if I say “The sun will come up tomorrow”, nor can I think of an example where such a statement would be a final justification; I can’t imagine the request that would lead to it nor anyone thinking that it would conclude justification because it is so ubiquitous and uncontested to be merely banal. The fact it is so certain makes it inconsequential to justification.

[A hinge] is something that stands fast in a practice, a bedrock commitment expressed in how we proceed, what we take for granted, what counts as doubt, and what counts as a mistake. Hinges are not the kind of things we arrive at by argument, but they are also not arbitrary. They belong to the inherited background against which reasons, evidence, and defeaters can have their force. — Sam26

Now I acknowledge our inherited practices and share what I take as your desire to explain justification as a practice with particular internal workings and criteria upon which we naturally guide and judge behavior. But I do think describing a practice as “bedrock” is to ignore that, although there are many things which our practices rely on, there is much in the process of justification that is subject to failure. More to the point, the practice itself rests, as you say, on our commitment (what Wittgenstein calls convention; Emerson, conformity; Rousseau, the social contract). Now Witt does say we would have to imagine a vastly different society, but, say, if no one admits mistakes, nor forgives them, the “force” of the practice—without that societal participation—is lost to us; they become mere words. Confession and absolution are relegated to empty rituals. Now imagine a world were no one has inherited the guiderails of rational discourse… Of course, all the more reason to make them explicit and teach others their implications, benefits, and pitfalls; so we carry on.

I think the fact that “hinges” are in a sense so certain (as pure logic is) makes them desirable as an attempt to ensure closure with some sense of force, but I would think we should be able to agree that that kind of certainty is not necessary (a requirement) for justification of a belief, and I take that to be because the way justification works is not on a scale, with certainty as the pinnacle (nor radical skepticism as its nemesis). More along your other points, the structure of each practice provides for the way in which justification is reached in the matter (including justification itself), not even taking into account an actual particular case.

All that is to say that I think the matter of when and where justification ends is not the antithesis of, or in response to, classic philosophical skepticism. I take that world-ending skepticism to come from an initial and voracious desire for abstract, timeless universality that wipes out all ordinary, rational criteria of particular practices or cases. No fact is enough to satisfy it, but I think justification is not about being more abstract and general, but more specific and detailed.

The familiar pattern is that a person has a true belief, and can cite what appears to be a justification, yet we hesitate to call it knowledge. The standard moral is that JTB is missing some extra condition. — Sam26

I don’t have the familiarity with this way of problematizing justification, and I’m not sure I care to as I think you’re on the right track anyway. The only parts that set the spider sense off are the descriptors like “seems” or “looks like” or “appearance” vs “genuine”. I take “seeing” here as a stand-in for a snap judgment by some other “impoverished” means than the actual criteria of the practice, and so imagining some object or “additional condition”, ignoring that it is an ongoing process and getting on with the meat of matter, e.g., “support that is either dependent on a false ground, or is insulated from the relevant mistake conditions, or is undermined by an undefeated defeater.” There is no reason to mystify justification or classify arguments before we take a look under the hood (well, there is a reason, which is control and certainty out of fear, but that’s another can of worms).

You say it is a matter of properly “describing” or “making clear” the criteria of justification (to the claimant I assume), but I might suggest it is a matter of applying them. It might actually be those to whom Gettier is responding who need the actual criteria of justification pointed out to them (so they aren’t inventing conditions/objects from made up criteria to judge the “look” of things).

No matter though, as I think you are treating it more with an eye that some people half-@$$ it and feel they can stand pat, rather than understanding the terms of the process and submitting to it in good faith—working to know and meet its criteria, attempting to cover objections that can be anticipated, and being open to ongoing correction and additional justifications (if it is “inadequate”). I would only suggest stepping away from “appearance”/“genuine” language in seeing that we reach “justificatory standing”, which is not some condition/quality or level of “certainty”, but follows from fulfilling—as necessary—the criteria of the practice (and the as-yet unexamined relationship with and to whom we are justifying).

The question of what it means to "mimic the conclusions" is central, I think — J

when a belief looks justified on the surface, the practice distinguishes genuine standing from mimicry by testing whether the person can track defeaters and revise under correction, and that test is often, though not always, dialogic. — Sam26

But it is not a matter of “genuine” or “mimicked” justification, but strong or weak. We don’t need to look past the justification and imagine something beyond it (seemingly “before” it, like a meaning before words)—our criteria are not for that. There is nothing that exists or not at the beginning; as Sam does say: it comes out in the process. We examine the justification and apply the criteria of the practice to judge—not whether it is mimicked—but whether it is: based on falsehoods, subject to defeat, etc.

If something is judged to have justification, there is no further asking if they got lucky, whether they knew what they were doing, etc., because the proof is in the pudding, not whether the cook never went to school (that is perhaps a reason, but a reason is a different beast).

If we think a belief is justified and it turns out it isn’t, that is (usually) on us, for not looking closer, digging deeper. It might have been a snow-job, trendy, or made up of false data. We might initially think a belief is justified but the work was plagerized (literally mimicked), but that is a judgment of something other than justification (it is still justified, just not by them). It could be a mistake, and not a deception.

We imagine an “appearance” to mitigate our error in judging because we don’t realize that 1) we can’t know until we start (I think Sam realizes that, as soon as we actually push, they’ll be found out to be, if, as he puts it, it is “fragile”), and 2) there is always the possibility we might be wrong (and even that a solid justification might be not the end of the matter), and this is where philosophy gets into trouble. Descartes starts the Meditations having been surprised to be wrong and never wanting to be again, so he manufactures something beyond the physical (but unfortunately still based on it). Here that means there is this extra quality of “seeming” or the claimant’s “understanding”, somehow before the application of the logical criteria in our ongoing practice of judgment.

Again, we only judge a claimant’s understanding of justification in and by their demonstration of it. There is no other criteria for understanding because it is not an independent quality of a person, it is a logical distinction—thus why you can be judged to have (demonstrated) a poor, pretty good or excellent understanding (it’s not just either there or not, as it were, beforehand). You may have training, experience, etc., but still not understand how justification actually works, which is just another way of saying you don’t do it well. If they actually suck at it, no one is going to say they understand it.

If we think a belief is justified and it turns out it isn’t, that is on us for not looking closer, digging deeper (barring unforeseen issues). It might have been a snow-job, trendy, or made up of false data. We might initially think a belief is justified but the work was plagerized (literally mimicked), but that is a judgment of something other than justification (it is still justified, just not by them). It doesn’t help that a weak job of justification is nevertheless done solely, genuinely by the claimant. We only judge their understanding of justification by their demonstration of it. There is no other criteria for understanding because it is not an independent quality of a person, it is a logical distinction—thus why you can have (demonstrated) a pretty good or excellent understanding. You may have training, experience, etc., but still not understand how justification actually works, which is just another way of saying you don’t do it well. It could be a mistake, but if they actually suck at it, no one is going to say they understand it. — Antony Nickles

First, on the plagiarism case. I don’t think it’s right to say, “it’s still justified, just not by them.” If the justification depends on borrowed work they can’t actually own, then what they have is at best a true claim with borrowed support, not objective justification done by them. Objective justification isn’t just that good reasons exist somewhere in the world. It’s that the person can take responsibility for the support in the way the practice requires, including answering for sources, handling challenges, and tracking what it would mean to correct one's claim. Plagiarism is a clean case of mimicking the conclusion while lacking competent justification.

Second, on “there is no other criteria for understanding.” I agree that understanding isn’t a private inner thing. But “demonstration” needs to include more than producing an argument that looks good. In a lot of cases, the difference between doing it well and doing it badly shows up when the person is pressed on mistake conditions: what would count against this, what alternatives are there, what would defeat it, what would you revise if X were true. Someone can generate a weak or even superficially strong justification and still be unable to navigate those checks. That’s why I connect understanding to the practice’s error and correction structure, not to an extra mental property.

I’m with you, viz., understanding isn’t an independent psychological quality. But it’s also not identical to any single performance of justification. It’s competence across the relevant challenges, the ability to sustain objective justification when the practice does what practices do, probe, test, correct, and sometimes expose that what looked like support but wasn't.

My perhaps obsessive concern with the appearance/reality question springs from my dislike of the term "reality" in philosophy. It's not that I think there's "more to it than this," but the opposite: I think there's less to it. I don't think we should say that epistemic justification can show us what is "real" -- though see Sam26's point above, about how "truth," "reality" and "constraint" are all aiming at the same role in this discussion. Which is part of why I try to avoid "reality" as a term. I don't think it does much independent work. And at worst, it can blur the distinction between questions about being, and questions about thinking. — J

I don’t think we need to drop the contrast the term is trying to gesture at. The point isn’t “justification shows us the Real,” it’s that justification is answerable to something beyond mere endorsement or conviction. If truth does that job for you, then we can speak in those terms: objective justification is what entitles a claim to be treated as true within a practice, meaning it survives the practice’s tests, correction procedures, and defeaters. In that sense, reality isn’t doing much work. It’s just a way of reminding ourselves that error is possible, that correction is not merely a change of opinion, and that inquiry aims at what's true or justified.

I’m with you on minimizing metaphysical overtones. We can keep the functional point, answerability to constraint, without treating reality as some heavyweight philosophical concept.

I don’t think we need to drop the contrast the term is trying to gesture at. The point isn’t “justification shows us the Real,” it’s that justification is answerable to something beyond mere endorsement or conviction. . . . In that sense, reality isn’t doing much work. It’s just a way of reminding ourselves that error is possible, that correction is not merely a change of opinion, and that inquiry aims at what's true or justified. — Sam26

Great. Yes, it's the contrast that's important. We don't need a terminological conclave to decide which term might be the "right" one to capture it. IMO, way too much time is wasted in philosophy trying to convince people that one's preferred terminology for abstracta ought to prevail. That time could be spent actually inquiring into the concepts or structures, regardless of what terms we use for them.

Plagiarism is a clean case of mimicking the conclusion while lacking competent justification. — Sam26

Okay, bad example. I stand by the philosophical point about “seeming” and mimicry. If part of justification is ongoing, it is antithetical for there to be something imagined to judge before that process. Someone could genuinely want to be responsible, but still not eventually be able to provide strong enough or sufficient justification, and again, they may make a mistake. The judgment we may reach is not only: genuine or mimicked?

And by demonstration, I did mean it as ongoing, not a single, independent demonstration. But, in the same manner, there is no (legitimate) way to—we should not/cannot—judge strength or weakness at the beginning, by the “surface” or “appearance”.

My larger point is that I think this issue gets us unnecessarily sucked into the morass they created, which I take as motivated by the desire to never be wrong, by projecting beforehand that we may always be fooled. The actual lesson is that justification is never certain (and our responsibility never stops), even given our best efforts. Its possibility of failure does not require there be (we create) a scapegoat.

@Sam26

I did, perhaps unfairly, edit my last two comments after posting them. The problem I believe (looking for confirmation @Jamal) is that following a link, from your email or notifications, takes you to the initial post, not the current version.

Instead of framing hinges as a metaphysical claim about reality, let’s consider how they function structurally. Just as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that certain limits are built into formal systems, Wittgenstein’s hinges show that certain fundamental assumptions are built into our epistemic practices.

In other words, hinges aren’t there to prove anything metaphysical. They’re there to show where our practices of justification find their foundational footing. By drawing a structural parallel to Gödel, we see that these structural boundaries are not arbitrary; they’re intrinsic to how our epistemic language
games work, and hoow systems of belief work generally.

The takeaway being: when we talk about hinges, we’re pointing out that certain stopping points are part of the grammar of justification. They help us see why pushing certain doubts beyond those points stops being an epistemic move and becomes a different kind of game entirely. That’s the structural parallel to Gödel’s insight, and it’s what gives hinges their power.

I guess I can't get away from hinges. :grin:

So in my framework, I talk about four senses of certainty, and these help explain the two different uses of "I know." First, there's epistemic certainty, which is really about having objective justification, something that stands up to public criteria and can’t easily be defeated. Then there's subjective certainty, which is more about personal conviction, it's the feeling of being sure about something from your own perspective. There's absolute certainty, which is tied to logical or moral necessity, i.e., things that simply cannot be otherwise. And finally, there's hinge certainty, viz., those arational bedrock commitments that make all these other kinds of certainty possible.

Now, when we say, "I know," we can be using it in that subjective sense, expressing a personal conviction, or we can be using it in the epistemic sense, pointing to something that meets those public standards of justification. My approach tries to show how these different senses of certainty all fit together. By grounding them in hinge certainty, we can see how both the subjective expression of "I know" and the epistemic use of "I know" are part of a larger, integrated picture."

I've finished reading your paper and I think it is an excellent piece of philosophy. It's careful, insightful, and clarifies much confusion surrounding knowledge and justification. On the basis of your paper I've worked up five questions for your consideration. Some of these you've already addressed to some extent. Feel free to respond or ignore at your convenience.

1. On Justification vs. Judgment
You speak eloquently about justification within practice, but where, precisely, is judgment?

You describe justification as a public standing governed by grammar and practice, but you do not clearly distinguish justification from the reflective act of judgment by which the subject affirms that the conditions for truth are fulfilled. Do you intend judgment to be absorbed into justification, or is it an irreducible moment you have not yet made explicit? If it is absorbed, how do you avoid collapsing epistemic success into conformity with practice?

Main concern: Knowledge is not exhausted by correct use or standing; it culminates in an act of judgment that affirms being. I would argue that act cannot be replaced by grammar without loss.

2. On Fallibility and Responsible Error
Does fallibility still have a robust role in your account, or has it become merely retrospective?

You often describe epistemic failure as showing that justification was never genuinely present. But is it not essential to fallibilism that one can inquire responsibly, satisfy the norms of justification as one understands them, and still fail because the world does not cooperate? How does your account preserve the possibility of responsible error rather than reclassifying all failure as defective justification?

Main concern: Without real fallibility, inquiry loses its ethical and rational seriousness; it becomes outcome-sensitive rather than responsibility-sensitive.

3. On Hinges and Horizon-Shift
Are your ‘bedrock certainties’ merely operative, or are they immune?

You rightly emphasize that inquiry presupposes what stands fast, but you tend to treat these certainties as outside epistemic assessment altogether. How, then, do you account for intellectual conversion—those moments when what once stood fast becomes questionable and inquiry reorganizes itself at a deeper level? Are your hinges provisional horizons, or final grammatical boundaries?

Main concern: Reason is not merely conditioned by horizons; it is capable of self-transcendence and horizon-shift.

4. On Grammar and Being
You clarify the grammar of knowing, but what grounds its authority?

Much of your analysis operates at the level of grammar, practice, and use. This is illuminating. But grammar on its own only describes the rules that govern discourse; it does not explain why some practices yield knowledge and others drift into error. What, in your account, makes our epistemic practices answerable to reality rather than merely self-stabilizing?

Main concern: Normativity cannot be grounded solely in use; it must ultimately be grounded in being as known through inquiry.

5. On Understanding Without Insight
Is your ‘understanding’ sufficiently cognitive, or is it merely procedural?

You insist that understanding is internal to justification, yet you often characterize it in terms of correct use, competence, and participation in practice. Where, in this account, is insight—the act by which intelligibility is grasped rather than merely followed? Without insight, how do you distinguish genuine understanding from highly refined conformity?

Main concern: Understanding is not only knowing how to go on in accordance with practice; it is grasping why things are so.

As I'm going through your paper -- which is extremely good -- I want to clarify one thing: Do you consider that traditional JTB is supposed to guarantee knowledge? Or is its goal more modest -- to provide grounds for claiming knowledge?

As I'm going through your paper -- which is extremely good -- I want to clarify one thing: Do you consider that traditional JTB is supposed to guarantee knowledge? Or is its goal more modest -- to provide grounds for claiming knowledge? — J

I take traditional JTB to be doing something more modest than guaranteeing knowledge in any infallible sense. I treat it as a grammar for when a claim to know is responsibly made, a true belief with objective justification in the relevant practice of what justification entails within the 5 methods I describe. That’s why I say JTB “mirrors the way we distinguish between mere belief and belief that has a secure place in our shared life,” and why it remains “a natural starting point” for thinking about knowledge.

This is also where it helps to separate JTB as a definition from JTB in practice. As a definition, it gives a clean schema. In practice, justification is not a simple box-check, it’s what your claim can actually justify inside a practice that has standards for evidence, error, correction, and defeat, and that treats some challenges as relevant and some not.

Those standards of practice (justification) aren’t private feelings or inner impressions, they’re “displayed in our shared procedures of correction and agreement, in what counts as getting it right and what counts as needing revision.”

I don't claim that JTB guarantees knowledge unless you're speaking about deductive reasoning (it's absolute in a restricted way). Most of our knowledge is inductive and so it's mostly probabilistic. It really depends on your method of justification. The method I provide can do both.

1. On Justification vs. Judgment
You speak eloquently about justification within practice, but where, precisely, is judgment?

You describe justification as a public standing governed by grammar and practice, but you do not clearly distinguish justification from the reflective act of judgment by which the subject affirms that the conditions for truth are fulfilled. Do you intend judgment to be absorbed into justification, or is it an irreducible moment you have not yet made explicit? If it is absorbed, how do you avoid collapsing epistemic success into conformity with practice?

Main concern: Knowledge is not exhausted by correct use or standing; it culminates in an act of judgment that affirms being. I would argue that act cannot be replaced by grammar without loss. — Esse Quam Videri

I don’t want “judgment” to disappear, and I’m not trying to replace it with grammar. I’m trying to locate its role in the process.

On my view, judgment is the act of taking p to be true, the moment a person makes a commitment about belief X. Objective justification is what makes that commitment responsible, not a mere statement. So judgment and justification aren’t rivals. Judgment is the affirmation of X, justification is the warrant for that affirmation in a practice that includes standards for evidence, mistake, correction, and defeat. Without judgment, you don’t have a claim at all. Without objective justification, you have conviction, guesswork, or mere assent, even if you can produce something that looks like a justification.

That also answers the worry about collapse into conformity. My account doesn’t say “whatever a practice treats as justified is thereby knowledge.” A practice can be defective, insulated, or sloppy. That’s exactly why I make the constraints explicit, viz, the practice has to be one where error is possible, correction is intelligible, defeaters are taken seriously, and standards are answerable to failure modes. If those conditions aren’t in place, then you can have judgment and even conformity, but you don’t have objective justification in my sense.

On your last line, “an act of judgment that affirms being,” I’d put it a bit differently. Judgment can be oriented toward what is the case, and in that sense, it aims at reality (the facts), but epistemology can’t guarantee that orientation by introspection alone. That’s why I keep the paper aimed at epistemic certainty, objective justification, not at Cartesian absolute certainty. Judgment is irreducible as a human act, but the epistemic status of the judgment depends on whether it is governed by the right standards of practice rather than merely produced with confidence.

we’re pointing out that certain stopping points are part of the grammar of justification — Sam26

I haven’t read everything yet, but I think looking into this is essential, because a big part of what makes justification important to us, is its need to find an end (or not).

pushing certain doubts beyond those points stops being an epistemic move and becomes a different kind of game entirely. — Sam26

Another very important point. Not only is the claimant (and claim) subject to judgment, but there are intelligible bounds, requirements, and mechanics of what is appropriate on the part of the one doing the judging.

I would conjecture there is some interplay not only with defeating a justification, but—in what I would think was essential—also acknowledging the sufficiency of the claim along logical criteria. The point at which questions about a justification slow and there’s less and less pushing further on responses, perhaps have something to do with coming to an end.

Separately, I would also note that bringing in the idea of justification as a practice shows the necessity of there being a claimant, which introduces the involvement of individual participation and judgment (not “seeing”) but as representative of our culture and practices

Thank you for these clarifying remarks. I have one additional follow-up question: in your account, is objective justification sufficient for knowledge, or is it a necessary but fallible condition whose success still depends on the independent fulfillment of conditions?

You say, quite reasonably, that epistemology cannot guarantee orientation toward reality by introspection alone, and I agree entirely. But I would be similarly reluctant to say that orientation toward reality is guaranteed by practice instead.

The residual worry here is this: practices can be corrigible, sensitive to defeat, and historically successful, and yet still fail to deliver truth in particular cases. It seems that at some point we must appeal to ‘being’ (what-is-the-case) in order to explain how a judgement can fully satisfy the norms of well-governed practice and yet still fail to be true. Practice can regulate responsibility, but success still depends on how things are. I'm not saying that you are refusing to make such an appeal, only that I didn't see it stated explicitly anywhere in your paper.

Thank you for these clarifying remarks. I have one additional follow-up question: in your account, is objective justification sufficient for knowledge, or is it a necessary but fallible condition whose success still depends on the independent fulfillment of conditions?

You say, quite reasonably, that epistemology cannot guarantee orientation toward reality by introspection alone, and I agree entirely. But I would be similarly reluctant to say that orientation toward reality is guaranteed by practice instead.

The residual worry here is this: practices can be corrigible, sensitive to defeat, and historically successful, and yet still fail to deliver truth in particular cases. It seems that at some point we must appeal to ‘being’ (what-is-the-case) in order to explain how a judgement can fully satisfy the norms of well-governed practice and yet still fail to be true. Practice can regulate responsibility, but success still depends on how things are. I'm not saying that you are refusing to make such an appeal, only that I didn't see it stated explicitly anywhere in your paper. — Esse Quam Videri

Objective justification is necessary for knowledge, but it’s not a guarantee, because truth is the success condition. For example, I say in the paper “Truth remains the success condition for knowledge. To say that a belief is true is to say that the world is as the proposition represents it.”

However, even a well-governed practice is subject to failure: a belief can meet the standards and still turn out false. That’s not a defect in the idea of objective justification; it’s part the fallible character of our justificatory system.

What objective justification does secure is the right to claim "I know..." the right to treat the belief as knowledge, given our best efforts. That’s why I point to the guardrails: they don’t make truth automatic; they discipline the way justification can fail. “No False Grounds excludes cases in which the support is defective… Practice Safety excludes cases in which truth is reached only by luck… Defeater Screening excludes cases in which the belief cannot retain standing under relevant challenge.”

This is also why I keep insisting that the target is epistemic certainty, not absolute certainty: “much of what we count as knowledge is not secured by absolute certainty,” and JTB+U clarifies “how fallibility and knowledge coexist.”

If you want one line: objective justification governs responsibility and standing, truth governs success, and my claim is that we can have real knowledge without infallibility because our practice of justification aims at disciplined, defeater-resistant stability, while still understanding that “how things are” can definitely surprise us.

You rightly emphasize that inquiry presupposes what stands fast, but you tend to treat these certainties as outside epistemic assessment altogether. How, then, do you account for intellectual conversion—those moments when what once stood fast becomes questionable and inquiry reorganizes itself at a deeper level? Are your hinges provisional horizons, or final grammatical boundaries? — Esse Quam Videri

Conversion is real, and it’s actually a good test of what I believe Wittgenstein means by hinges. Some hinges that stand fast for us are local and revisable (like the rules of chess), and when they shift the whole field of inquiry gets reorganized. But not everything that stands fast is like that. There are also deeper certainties (I'm an object separate from other objects) that function as conditions of intelligibility for doubt and checking in the first place, and those don’t shift in the same way, because if they did the activity of inquiry would collapse.

My answer is: hinges aren’t all on one level (some are foundational, but others are bedrock). Some are provisional horizons within a practice, the ones that can change as inquiry advances. Others are grammatical boundaries in the strict sense, the background without which “evidence,” “error,” “correction,” and “defeater” stop having any role. Intellectual conversion is usually a reorganization among the first kind, a shift in what was taken for granted within the system.

This is why I call (and others) hinge certainty arational. It’s not that a hinge is sacred or immune by decree. It’s that hinges typically aren’t the kind of things that are decided by the ordinary routes of objective justification. When they genuinely change, it’s less like refuting a claim and more like adopting a new framework.

Gettier does not overturn JTB; it signals the need to make explicit features of justification that the classical formulation left implicit. — Sam26

From what I can tell, the Ten Coins situation does not have “features” at all, to even make explicit.

It is a standing within a practice, fixed by public criteria that settle what counts as competent support in the context. — Sam26

This case doesn’t even have any criteria, or mechanics, or judgments (what you might call “linguistic training”) for the relation between coins and jobs. It is obviously philosophy trying to shoehorn formal logic onto a situation without any viable alternative. The fact that it is an imagined world actually does not matter. Wittgenstein creates simple situations (like picking a color of flower) but it is to show the consequences of imposing forced criteria by contrasting that with what we would need of a wider context of criteria and mechanics (even imagined) for a situation. Now the criteria for justification are all well and good, but this doesn’t even get off the ground; it just seems like a lot of work to say correlation is not causation. What remains unsettled for me is not some problem of “surface” justification, but a superficial understanding of how justification even works. It is a failure of the questioner.