Infinitism, finitude and normativity

I evaluate two new objections to an infinitist account of epistemic justification, and conclude that they fail to raise any new problems for infinitism. The new objections are a refined version of the finite-mind objection, which says infinitism demands more than finite minds can muster, and the normativity objection, which says infinitism entails that we are epistemically blameless in holding all our beliefs. I show how resources deployed in response to the most popular objection to infinitism, the original finite-mind objection, can be redeployed to address the two new objections. Peter Klein presents the most carefully articulated version of epistemological infinitism on offer. Klein’s infinitist theory of epistemic justification has steadily evolved over the past decade. The basic idea is this. For a proposition Q to be justified for you is for there to be available to you an appropriately structured, infinite series of reasons supporting Q. For you to justifiedly believe Q is for you to have appropriately produced enough of the reasons from that series in order to satisfy the contextually determined standards of justification. We can state the basic idea more precisely. Where every distinct * This is the penultimate draft of a paper forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. Please cite the published version if possible.