Epistemic Just fiction

According to an ancient and honorable tradition, knowledge isjustified true belief. But what is this "justification?" Theologians of the Protestant Reformation (however things may stand with their contemporary epigoni) had a clear conception of justification; justification, they held, is by faith. Contemporary epistemologists, sadly enough, do not thus speak with a single voice. They don't often subject the concept in question-the concept of epistemic justification-to explicit scrutiny; but when they do discuss it, they display a notable lack of unanimity. Some claim that justification is by epistemic dutifulness, others, that it is by coherence, and still others that it is by reliability. In what follows I shall try to get a clearer look at epistemic justification and allied conceptions. I shall argue that none of the above is the correct answer, and suggest an alternative. But here we need a preliminary word as to what it is, more exactly, I mean to be talking about. How shall we initially locate epistemic justification? First, such terms as 'justification' and 'justified' are, as Roderick Chisholm suggests (See Chisholm, 1977), terms of epistemic appraisal; to say that a proposition is justified for a person is to say that his believing or accepting it has positive epistemic status for him. What we appraise here are a person's beliefs, more exactly, his believings. We may speak of a person's beliefs as warranted, or justified, or rational or reasonable, contrasting them with beliefs that are unwarranted, unjustified, irrational, or unreasonable. Secondly, epistemic justification or positive epistemic status clearly comes in degrees: at any rate some of my beliefs have more by way of positive epistemic status for me than others. And thirdly, among the fundamental concepts of epistemology we find, naturally enough, the concept of knowledge. It is widely agreed that true belief, while necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient for it. What more is required? Whatever exactly this further element may