A Theory of Epistemic Justification

One goal of epistemology is to refute the skeptic. Another, with an equally dist- guished if briefer pedigree, is to make sense of science as a knowledge-acquiring enterprise. The goals are incompatible, in that the latter presupposes that the skeptic is wrong. The incompatibility is not strict. One could have both goals, conditi- ing the latter upon success at the former. In fact, however, epistemologies aimed at the skeptic tend not to get anywhere near science. They've got all they can handle guring out how we can know we have hands. I come to epistemology from the philosophy of science, my original interest in which was epistemological. Philosophers of science are concerned with epistemic justi cation, but their question about it is how far it extends. They take justi cation to be unproblematic at the level of ordinary experience; their worries begin with the interpretation of experience as evidence for theory. They are interested in the scope of scienti c knowledge. Having taken a position on this question (1997), - guing that justi cation extends to theoretical hypotheses, I came to wonder about the nature of justi cation generally. This is not a belated discovery of the skeptical problem or a reconsideration of what I took to be unproblematic. It is simply an interest in the possibility of locating epistemic advance in science within a broader understanding of the nature of epistemic justi cation. Now that I know that just- cation extends to theory, I am taking a step back and asking what justi cation is.

Jarrett Leplin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Amherst College in 1966, and his PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1972. He specializes in the philosophy of science and epistemology. He has lectured at over 50 universities and professional conferences, and is the author of over 100 publications, including 'A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism', published by Oxford University Press in 1997. His work has focued on philosophical issues involving scientific method, the epistemology of scientific change, realism and instrumentalism, the nature of evidence, epistemic paradoxes, and reliabilist theories of justification and knowledge. He is the recipient of an NEH fellowship, an NEH summer stipend, and grants from the Philosophy of Science Association and the American Philosophical Society. Leplin has been Program Director of the Philosophy of Science Association and President of the North Carolina Philosophical Society.