which involved withholding assent entirely, on either all propositions (as in the case of rustic Pyrrhonians) or on controversial propositions (as in the case of urbane Pyrrhonists). Academic skeptics were more inclined to assert philosophical doctrines (such as the thesis that skepticism about epistemic justification is true); however, as Michael Frede (1998) has noted, even these bolder skeptics were often disinclined to say they knew the truth of their own skeptical doctrine, even if (unlike Pyrrhonian skeptics) they were inclined to assert the theses.12 12 See, most notably, Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism (1976). Unlike the radical skeptic of Descartes' Meditations who denies that any of our beliefs are known, the Pyrrhonian skeptic denies that beliefs even attain the status of being justifiably held. For some helpful contemporary discussion of how to interpret the Pyrrhonian's controversial epistemological thesis, see Burnyeat and Frede (1997) and, in particular, Barnes (1998) and Frede (1998). Cf. Fine (2000) for related discussion concerning the distinction between Cartesian and Pyrrhonian skepticism.
13 13 See, for example, Turri and Klein (2014, p. 3).
14 14 It is possible to be a skeptical infinitist by insisting that the structure of justification is as the infinitist says it is, and then to submit further that this structure is not instantiated in any human mind. See, for example, Aikin (2005). For our purposes, we will be discussing only non‐skeptical infinitism.
15 15 This is a paraphrased reconstruction of the argument as stated initially by Turri and Klein (2014, p. 3).
16 16 That's not to say there are not various in‐house disputes between coherentists and foundationalists that lead some coherentist and foundationalist views to end up looking very different from one another.
17 17 This line of reply is briefly canvassed by Sosa (1980, p. 10).
18 18 Recall that in attempting to come up with a method for determining which entries in Your Book of Beliefs should be included in Your Book of Justified Beliefs, you are in the main searching for some feature which could potentially serve to distinguish the justified from the unjustified beliefs; the feature of being justified by further beliefs is but one such candidate potential feature. As we'll see in Section 1.5, foundationalists are disinclined to think the feature of being justified by further beliefs is the feature we should be looking for.
19 19 The sense of “availability” at issue here will be of relevance to the viability of infinitism; we engage with this point later in this section.
20 20 For presentational purposes, we are setting aside the contested question of what basing a belief on a reason involves. Some philosophers think it is a matter of a reason causing your belief. Others think it is a matter of having beliefs about your reasons supporting your beliefs. Others still take the notion to be a theoretical primitive. See Korcz (2015) for an overview and Carter and Bondy (eds.) (2019), for a recent volume of papers that engages with a range of contemporary views on epistemic basing.
21 21 Turri (2013, pp. 791–792).
22 22 Note that for the purposes of this discussion, we are setting aside issues to do with the distinction between inductive and deductive support relations, which is a central topic in Chapter 4, on inference.
23 23 Note that Podlaskowski and Smith offer a more sophisticated normativity‐based argument which builds on the argument we are discussing in this chapter. For space constraints, we won't be surveying the normativity argument.
24 24 Dispositions are often theorized in terms of counterfactual conditionals. For example, the disposition “flammability” corresponds with the counterfactual conditional: if it were struck (in appropriate conditions), it would catch fire. For an overview, see Choi and Fara (2016).
25 25 See, for example, Turri (2013). For a counterreply to Turri, see Podlaskowski and Smith (2014).
26 26 Recall that doxastic justification for the infinitist requires two components: first, that the belief be propositionally justified, and, second, that the agent cite enough of the reasons from the series to satisfy contextual demands. If the notion of availability is weakened in the sense that it might have to be in order to get around Podlaskowski and Smith's objection, then it looks as though the infinite series of reasons “available” to you in such an attenuated sense has a marginalized role to play in explaining your doxastic justification. And, correspondingly, the reasons you cite to satisfy contextual demands play a comparatively larger role in accounting for your doxastic justification. But at this point, the position begins to look like a version of foundationalism rather than infinitism! Doxastic justification would in the main be a matter of citing a finite number of reasons (the last of which plays a special role in “clinching” the contextual provision demand), whereas the infinite series that is available to you includes reasons you'd more likely than not fail to cite correctly.
27 27 Incidentally, this is a point that Sosa (1980, p. 19) appeals to in objecting as well to coherentism.
28 28 The fact that it makes little sense to support the more certain with the less certain is why Wittgenstein objected to G.E. Moore's (1939) famous attempt to prove through argument that the external world exists – something Moore knows if he knows anything at all (including the reasons he could cite as evidence for it). For further discussion of Moore's proof, see Chapter 11 on skepticism.
29 29 Ernest Sosa (1980, p. 8) refers to this general position – that justification is a matter of relations between beliefs – as an Intellectualist Model of Justification.
30 30 This line of thinking could be further developed so as to indicate that your belief that the singular proposition “There is a tomato” is true, after the reveal, will accompany not only other demonstrative singular propositions (e.g. such as that the thing on the platter looks like a tomato) but also general propositions – for example, that something is on the table. Our response to the worry (expressed without reference to general propositions) applies mutatis mutandis to a version of the worry that included general propositions. For discussion about the difference between the two, see Fitch and Nelson (2016).
31 31 For helpful discussions of irrationality and delusion, see Bortolotti (2014) and Sacks (1985). The example of people who
