Fumerton (2015) What the Internalist Should Say to the Tortoise

Richard Fumerton, "What the Internalist Should Say to the Tortoise," Episteme, 12, 2 (2015) 209–217.

 

1. Introduction

① Carroll’s (1895) short piece “What the Tortoise said to Achilles” in many ways anticipates issues that arise in a number of contemporary controversies. One might argue, for example, that initially plausible attempts to deal with the problem of easy knowledge will land one in the unfortunate position of Achilles who followed the Tortoise down a road that leads to vicious infinite regress.

Tortoise 's skeptic arguments	The Problem of Easy Knowledge
inferntial justification (deductive and inductive reasoning)	non-inferential justification (perception, memory) + induction[각주:1]
Both lead us to the problem of infinite regress.

 

② Fumerton's view on inferential justification (1995, 2004, 2006)

To be justied in believing P on the basis of E one needs to be not only justified in believing E, but justified in believing that E makes probable P (where entailment is the upper limit of making probable).

And again, critics have argued that such a strong requirement fails to learn the lesson that Achilles should have been taught by the Tortoise. Even more generally, one might well argue that strong access internalists will need to deal with a variation of Carroll’s puzzle even for their accounts of non-inferential justification.

It is kinda similar to KR Principle, which is formalized by Cohen, as follows:

KR A potential knowledge source K can yield knowledge for S, only if S knows K is reliable

 

③ Carroll’s puzzle

 

1. Cohen (2002) primarily focuses on the sources of knowledge of the external world) [본문으로]