This dissertation defends a contextualist theory of justification: I argue that the justification of our beliefs depends on the context in which those beliefs are held. By way of opposition, I maintain that moderate foundationalism and coherentism are mistaken in interesting ways, ways that indicate the necessary role of contextual factors. ;Contextualism is also open to criticism, however. The most serious is that contextualism is a version of perspectivism: justification is just a matter of pe…
Read moreThis dissertation defends a contextualist theory of justification: I argue that the justification of our beliefs depends on the context in which those beliefs are held. By way of opposition, I maintain that moderate foundationalism and coherentism are mistaken in interesting ways, ways that indicate the necessary role of contextual factors. ;Contextualism is also open to criticism, however. The most serious is that contextualism is a version of perspectivism: justification is just a matter of perspective or, at most, social convention. To counter this charge I propose embedding contextualism within a modestly naturalized epistemology. Doing so, I argue, allows one to profit from the parallels between epistemology and science while accounting for the natural constraints on belief justification. ;I am careful to distinguish my version of naturalism from that of Quine and other naturalized epistemologists. Quine does not, first of all, explain the basis of our epistemic principles; moreover, his naturalism equivocates over whether epistemology is a normative or purely descriptive discipline. I criticize other naturalists for embracing reliabilism, scientific realism and reductivism. I argue that these additional commitments are both problematic and unnecessary: they make naturalism implausible while distorting the relationship between epistemology and science. ;I propose instead a pragmatic naturalism, drawing on John Dewey's theory of inquiry. Dewey's naturalism is based on the claim that epistemic principles emerge as inquiries proceed: while these principles are not a priori, neither are they merely conventional. Pragmatic naturalism, as a result, prevents the conflation of contextualism with perspectivism. In addition, I argue, a pragmatic naturalism treats epistemology as a fundamentally normative discipline, while avoiding the issues that lead to radical philosophical skepticism. ;The dissertation closes with three case-studies that illustrate the role of contextual factors in belief justification. These case studies show that a contextualist theory of justification, when embedded within a pragmatic naturalism, can account for how we do justify beliefs, as well as how we ought to