A Defense Of Evidentialism

The question of "what proposition is one justified in believing" is the core issue of ethics of belief.The classical answer to this question is evidentialism.Evidentialism holds that S is justified in believing p if and only if S’s evidence supports p.According to evidentialism,coherence should also be taken as evidence.I will defend this doctrine.There are two objections to evidentialism,the pragmatic encroachment and the intellectual character objection.The pragmatic encroachment holds that practical factors affect the justification of beliefs.Pragmatic encroachment argues that there are situations where two people should have different cognitive attitudes,while they have the same evidence.In the allergy case,after taking coherence in consideration,I argue that the subjects hold different evidence.In the local train case,pragmatic encroachment misunderstands the relationship between justified belief and justified behavior,so it cannot prove that the subjects should hold different attitudes towards the proposition.Neither of the two cases is valid,pragmatic encroachment can not defeat evidentialism.The intellectual character objection was put forward by Baehr,who argued that the intellectual characters affect the justification of the belief.Baehr argues that there is a case where the evidence at time t supports proposition p,while S is not justified in believing p.I argue that in such case,the subject’s evidence cannot support p.I retort the argument offered by Baehr,attribute to the different evidence that the subject should have and the personal epistemology wrongdoing of the subject,the subject’s belief is not justified.Both cases cannot defeat the principle of evidentialism.By refuting the above objections,I defend the principle of evidentialism which takes coherence as evidence.