出版社：Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
摘要：In the book Between Probability and Certainty: What Justifies Belief,Martin Smith provides his normic theory of justification (NTJ) in contrast to the risk minimization conception (RMC) which is the prevailing view of epistemic justification. In general,it is not necessary to claim that a justified belief implies this belief is true and it seems that people are accustomed to using the probability point of view to determine the status of justification of a belief,which is the higher the probability of a belief being true,the more justification we give to this belief. However,Smith tries to provide another option for us to deal with this “uncertainty situation.” In Chapters 1–6,Smith develops his theory and compares it to RMC in various aspects of justification—explanation,normalcy,and the comparative; in the last three chapters,Smith gives some formal and technical results in his theory. In this book review,I present the main argument of the book by means of three examples (the lottery case,the laptop case,and the catered case) provided in this book and one example that I give in the conclusion which points out some possible insufficiencies of Smith’s theory.
