Author: Curt Doolittle

JUSTIFICATIONISM VS TESTIMONIALISM

Moral Permission vs Prohibition on Falsehoods.

Justification is a normative and Positive activity

—“One way of explaining the theory of justification is to say that a justified belief is one that we are “within our rights” in holding. The rights in question are neither political nor moral, however, but intellectual.

In some way, each of us is responsible for what we believe. Beliefs are not typically formed completely at random, and thus we have an intellectual responsibility, or obligation, to try to believe what is true and to avoid believing what is false. An intellectually responsible act is within one’s intellectual rights in believing something; performing it, one is justified in one’s belief.

Thus, justification is a normative notion. The standard definition is that a concept is normative if it is a concept regarding or depending on the norms, or obligations and permissions (very broadly construed), involved in human conduct. It is generally accepted that the concept of justification is normative, because it is defined as a concept regarding the norms of belief.”—

Testimonialism (“Complete” Critical Rationalism) Is a Descriptive and Negative Activity.

Instead of justifying why we have the right to believe something, we warranty that we have done due diligence against error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception.

Through history we have asked people to warranty their honest, but not their truthfulness. This is becuase we did not know until very recently if not the past few years, how to warranty our speech as truthful. Now that we do, we can. Just as we incrementally suppressed violence, theft, fraud, conspiracy, rent seeking, and various other forms of parasitism, why cannot we now increase the cost upon individuals to refrain from damage to the informational commons?

This places a higher burden on members of a debate to refrain from engaging in fallacies, and holds people materially acceptable for doing so.

Thus we have free truthful speech, but not free deceitful, wishful, biased, or erroneous speech.

Just as we may use air, water, land, roads, parks and public buildings, we must take care not to damage it for others. We may not damage information either. Information is a commons. Why is it that we do not place the burden of truthfulness on those who would wish to make use of it?