Bottom Up Justification, Asymmetric Epistemic Push, and the Fragility of Higher Order Justification

Abstract

Document Version Peer reviewed versionwhile we can reject Bottom Up, we can still accept that justified higher order beliefs significantly affect the justification of first order beliefs. Third, I argue that the epistemic justification of higher order belief is fragile in the sense that it tends to dissipate when a subject is confronted with certain defeaters, including notably the sort of defeaters arising from disagreement, precisely when higher order justification depends on first order success in the ways that one may think support Bottom Up. IntroductionSuppose that my object level belief accurately reflects the strength of the evidence available to me: my evidence e warrants credence n in a proposition p, and upon Broncano-Berrocal, and Josefine Pallavicini. Thanks to an anonymous referees for Episteme for no less than two sets of detailed and helpful comments to earlier drafts.