Justified belief as an epistemic aim of education

Abstract

Critical thinking is considered to be a central epistemic aim of education. The claim may be about skills, but also about the state of justified belief. In opposition to this latter view, Alvin Goldman (1999) claimed that justification is only a means to true belief and that the only fundamental epistemic aim of education is true belief. Harvey Siegel’s (2005) response defended the view that justified belief is in fact a fundamental epistemic aim of education. In a recent article, Alessia Marabini and Luca Moretti (2020) analyze Siegel’s arguments, reject all of them, and provide two new ones. I defend one of Siegel’s arguments against their objection, raise some doubts about one of their own arguments, and give an additional argument against Goldman’s view.