The existentialistic approach to truth THE EXISTENTIALISTIC APPROACH TO TRUTH

THE ECISTENTIALISTIC APPROCH TO TRUTH

DAVID RAJA A.

REG.NO.B09007

The existentialistic approach to truth could be in three ways (1)
Ethical (2) Aesthetical (3) Religious. The ethical sphere is one where
duty and obedience to duty are predominant. The individual does not
realize himself from within; he rests rests satisfied with performing
duties which are universal laws imposed on him from without, that is
the society and its demands. It thus emphasizes on the universal and
general, and tends to suppress, in practice, one's individuality and
one's internal commitments before god. One is led to adopt the mores
of the crowd. The individual in terms of the universal, leaving no
room to the individual to remain true to what he is before god. The
tendency in the ethical sphere is to separate duty or law from inner
voice of god heard only in the within of man, in his individualness
and singularity. The outcome could be the wrong identification of
morality and religion.
The aesthetical as well as the ethical stages of life are in the last
analysis illusory. The illusion of the aesthetical stage is the
illusion of freedom. What seemed to have freed one remains a slave to
his own pleasures and passions. The illusion of the ethical stage is
the illusion of humanism. They have no transcendental backing they
cannot transform him from within; they were derived from human
requirements, and fixed, social standards. Being converted from this
stage to Christianity, he threw off the humanistic illusion and
finally adopted the standpoint of faith, which is characteristic of
the religious state of existence.
In the religious stage, man stands totally and singly before god. His
commitments are to god; his attitude is one of absolute faith in god,
which and man of aesthetical or ethical stage is unable to understand.
The greatest example of this is Abraham. To the ethicist Abraham's
action seemed to be paradoxical and an exception from the universal or
ethical. What god demanded of Abraham would seem paradoxical t the
ethicist. God promised Abraham that he would multiply his children
like the sands of the sea-shore the same god now asks him to murder
his only son, through whom were Abraham's children to multiplied
.god's demand also seems to be a demand for an exception from the
universal. The universal law given by god to men is: "thou shall not
kill!" the same god now asks Abraham to kill his innocent son! The
action of Abraham thus could not be understood by the ethicist.
Accordingly, to understand Abraham we are in need of a new category:
in drawing the knife. Abraham performed a purely personal action and
one which it is impossible to universalize –in fact, the universal
forbade it .yet, he was justified because he was in a private
relationship with god. This is the relationship of god, which
philosophers call the relationship of faith in which man blindly leaps
into god that the purely ethical does not acknowledge. Abraham was in
absolute relation to the absolute.
Abraham's action was dictated not by the universal, but by the
individual and the singular, that is, by the voice of god heard in the
heart of man in his singularity. The individual is higher than the
universal; the individual determines his relation to the universal yet
his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the anxiety, as
Abraham had to undergo a fierce struggle with him before he decided to
put his living personal relation with god above all moral laws.

HUMAN CAPACITY FOR REFLECTION Sodagudi Nagendra Babu (B09036) IIBPH

HUMAN CAPACITY FOR REFLECTION
Reflection is a term that many would immediately associate with intelligence. The capacity for human reflection can be traced as the excavation of intelligence. It is the capacity and the willingness of the humans to learn more about the fundamental questions regarding human existence etc. Human reflection is related to the philosophy of consciousness, the topic of awareness, consciousness in general and the philosophy of mind. Humans consider themselves to be the dominant species on Earth and the most advanced in intelligence and ability to manage their environment.
It is that capacity to reflect differentiates the human beings from all other creatures. Reflection represents an important form of human thought; from ancient to modern times, the human capacity for reflective thinking has held the imagination of various philosophers and educational theorists. Despite this interest, researchers define reflection in different ways.
Various attempts have been made to identify a single behavioral characteristic that distinguishes humans from all other animals. Some anthropologists think that readily observable characteristics are based on less easily observable mental processes that might be unique among humans: the ability to think symbolically, in the abstract or logically, although several species have demonstrated some abilities in these areas. Nor is it clear at what point exactly in human evolution these traits became prevalent. They may not be restricted to the species Homo sapiens, as the extinct species of the Homo genus are believed to also have been adept tool makers and may also have had linguistic skills.
In learning environments reflection is an important part of the loop to go through in order to maximize the utility of having experiences. Rather than moving on to the next 'task' we can review the process and outcome of the task and - with the benefit of a little distance (lapsed time) we can reconsider what the value of experience might be for us and for the context it was part of.
Intelligence is the capacity to reflectively contemplate, to think deeply in search of answer for the philosophical questions. However such capacity does not stand on its own. As in the case of constructive knowledge the capacity for reflective manipulation of information patterns is intimately armed with collective qualities of the dimensions of intelligence.

REALISM JOY M.T. 09019

REALISM
Realism denotes two distinct sets of philosophical theories, one
regarding the nature of universal concepts and the other dealing with
knowledge of objects in the world. In late - classical and medieval
philosophy, realism was a development of the Platonic theory of Forms
and held, generally, that universals such as "red" or "man" have an
independent, objective existence, either in a realm of their own or in
the mind of God. Medieval realism is usually contrasted with
Nominalism, and Peter Abelard and William of Occam provided the
classic critiques of realism from this point of view. In modern
philosophy realism is a broad term, encompassing several movements
whose unity lies in a common rejection of philosophical Idealism. In
its most general form, realism asserts that objects in the external
world exist independently of what is thought about them.
The most straightforward of such theories is usually known as naive
realism. It contends that in perception humans are made directly aware
of objects and their attributes and thus have immediate access to the
external world. This view fails, however, to explain perceptual
mistakes and illusions, and most realists argue that causal processes
in the mind mediate, or interpret, directly perceived appearances.
Thus, the objects remain in essence independent, although the causal
mechanism may distort, or even wholly falsify, the individual's
knowledge of them. Anselm's form of realism led him to the belief that
by giving proper attention to universal concepts one could prove the
truths of theology. He accepted revealed truth, but was convinced that
one should exercise reason in apprehending the truth. For example, he
was convinced that by "necessary reasons" he could demonstrate the
existence of God. Because God is the greatest of beings, Anselm
reasoned in his Pros logion, he must exist in reality as well as in
thought, for if he existed in thought only, a greater being could be
conceived of. Thus from consideration of an ideal or universal Anselm
believed that he could derive truth about what actually exists.
Augustine had modified Plato's realism by holding that universals
existed before the material universe in God's creative mind.
Twelfth century ultrarealists, such as Duns Scotus, Odo of Tournai,
and William of Champeaux, expanded this viewpoint (in his early
years), to posit that the logical and real orders are exactly
parallel. By proposing that universals come before individuals, the
ultrarealists maintained that the reality of individuals came from the
universal. Thus, humanity as a universal preceded individual men.
Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica amended this ultrarealist
position by developing Aristotle's doctrine that universals have a
being only in material objects. According to Aquinas, we cannot assert
that universals exist wholly apart from individual objects inasmuch as
we know of them only through sensory impressions of individual
objects. Thus, universals are abstracted from the knowledge rooted in
individual things. This "moderate realism" stressed that human reason
could not totally grasp God's being. One could profitably use reason,
then, to determine universals and one could use reason in theology
whenever it was concerned with the connection between universals and
individual objects. Realism had a great effect on the "natural
theology" of medieval scholasticism.
It affected both the method of demonstration and the shape of the
theological dogmas, which resulted. In philosophy, the theory that
universals (properties such as 'redness') have an existence
independent of the human mind. Realists hold that the essence of
things is objectively given in nature, and that our classifications
are not arbitrary. As such, realism is contrasted with Nominalism, the
theory that universals are merely names or general terms. More
generally, realism is any philosophical theory that emphasizes the
existence of some kind of things or objects, in contrast to theories
that dispense with the things in question in favor of words, ideas, or
logical constructions. In particular, the term stands for the theory
that there is a reality quite independent of the mind. In this sense,
realism is opposed to idealism, the theory that only minds and their
contents exist.

THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH - Joseph Palayolikunnel (B09028)

THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH
A criterion of truth is a rule, or norm, or standard, or test by which
we distinguish true judgments from those which are false. Since the
judgment is a natural mental process, the criterion of truth must be a
natural norm or test, well within the reach of every individual. Since
the judgment is an intellectual process, the criterion of truth must
be discoverable by the intellect. Since matter determines
consciousness, knowledge must be conceived in a realistic fashion; the
subject does not create the object, for the object exists
independently of the subject; knowledge results from the fact that
copies, reflections, or photographs of matter are present in the mind.
The world is not unknowable but is thoroughly knowable.
Naturally the true method of knowing consists solely in science
combined with technical practice; technical progress shows well enough
the degeneracy of all agnosticism. Though knowledge is essentially
sense knowledge, rational thought is necessary to organize these
experiential data. Positivism is "bourgeois charlatanry" and
"idealism," because we do actually grasp the essences of things
through phenomena. So far Marxist epistemology sets itself up as
absolute naive realism of the usual empiricist type. The peculiarity
of Marxist materialism lies in the fact that it combines this
realistic outlook with another one, the pragmatic. From the notion
that all contents of our consciousness are determined by our economic
needs it follows equally that each social class has its own science
and its own philosophy.
An independent, nonparty science is impossible; the truth is whatever
leads to success, and practice alone constitutes the criterion of
truth. Both these theories of knowledge are found side by side in
Marxism without anyone trying very hard to harmonize them. The most
they will concede is that our knowledge is a striving for the absolute
truth, but that for the moment it is simply relative, answering to our
needs. The Marxist dialectic considers theory and practice to be a
single entity and that what men actually do demonstrates the truth.
The criterion of truth is inextricably intertwined with social power.
Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops
step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently
man's knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step
by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to
the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided.
Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of
the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually
happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the
anticipated results in the process of social practice (material
production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants
to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results,
he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the
objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in
his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas
to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can
thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is
the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit".

CONCEPT OF COMMONSENSE- Sebastian Munduvelil(B09025)

                                                             Concept of Commonsense
Common sense, based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on that which they sense as their common natural understanding. Some people use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people in common. Thus common sense equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. However this is not the common dictionary definition. The most common meaning to the phrase is good sense and sound judgment in practical matters. It has nothing to do with what other people may think or feel. Whatever definition one uses, identifying particular items of knowledge as common sense becomes difficult. Philosophers may choose to avoid using the phrase when using precise language. But common sense remains a perennial topic in epistemology and many philosophers make wide use of the concept or at least refer to it. Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience (such as good will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale. Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false.
According to Aristotle, the common sense is an actual power of inner sensation whereby the various objects of the external senses (color for sight, sound for hearing, etc) are united and judged such that what one senses by this sense is the substance in which the various attributes inhere It was not, unlike later developments, considered to be on the level of rationality, which properly did not exist in the lower animals, but only in man; this irrational character was because animals not possessing rationality nevertheless required the use of the common sense in order to sense, for example, the difference between this or that thing, and not merely the pleasure and pain of various disparate sensations. Common sense, in this view, differs from later views in that it is concerned with the way one receives sensation, and not with belief, or wisdom held by many; accordingly, it is common, not in the sense of being shared among individuals, or being a genus of the different external senses, but in as much as it is a principle which governs the activity of the external senses.Appeal to common sense characterizes a general epistemological orientation called epistemological particularism.
 
source://wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH BY JOSEPH PALAYOLIKUNNEL(B09028)

THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH
A criterion of truth is a rule, or norm, or standard, or test by which
we distinguish true judgments from those which are false. Since the
judgment is a natural mental process, the criterion of truth must be a
natural norm or test, well within the reach of every individual. Since
the judgment is an intellectual process, the criterion of truth must
be discoverable by the intellect. Since matter determines
consciousness, knowledge must be conceived in a realistic fashion; the
subject does not create the object, for the object exists
independently of the subject; knowledge results from the fact that
copies, reflections, or photographs of matter are present in the mind.
The world is not unknowable but is thoroughly knowable.
Naturally the true method of knowing consists solely in science
combined with technical practice; technical progress shows well enough
the degeneracy of all agnosticism. Though knowledge is essentially
sense knowledge, rational thought is necessary to organize these
experiential data. Positivism is "bourgeois charlatanry" and
"idealism," because we do actually grasp the essences of things
through phenomena. So far Marxist epistemology sets itself up as
absolute naive realism of the usual empiricist type. The peculiarity
of Marxist materialism lies in the fact that it combines this
realistic outlook with another one, the pragmatic. From the notion
that all contents of our consciousness are determined by our economic
needs it follows equally that each social class has its own science
and its own philosophy.
An independent, nonparty science is impossible; the truth is whatever
leads to success, and practice alone constitutes the criterion of
truth. Both these theories of knowledge are found side by side in
Marxism without anyone trying very hard to harmonize them. The most
they will concede is that our knowledge is a striving for the absolute
truth, but that for the moment it is simply relative, answering to our
needs. The Marxist dialectic considers theory and practice to be a
single entity and that what men actually do demonstrates the truth.
The criterion of truth is inextricably intertwined with social power.
Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops
step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently
man's knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step
by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to
the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided.
Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of
the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually
happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the
anticipated results in the process of social practice (material
production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants
to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results,
he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the
objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in
his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas
to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can
thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is
the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit".

APRIORI KNOWLEDGE by Tintu Gopurathingal, ( 9009)

APRIORI KNOWLEDGE

Immanuel Kant put forward the two different kinds of knowledge a priori and a posteriori in his book "The Critique of Pure Reason." The Latin phrases a priori ("from what is before") and a posteriori ("from what is after") were used in philosophy originally to distinguish between arguments from causes and arguments from effects. Apriori is said to be "from causes to the effect" and an argument a posteriori to be "from effects to causes." the use of a priori to distinguish knowledge such as that which we have in mathematics is comparatively recent, the interest of philosophers in that kind of knowledge is almost as old as philosophy itself. Philosophers who have taken seriously the possibility of learning by mere thinking have often considered that this requires some special explanation. So the called this kind of knowledge as the a priori knowledge. This is introduced by Kant but the other philosophers also made their comment on the same concept. For René Descartes, going further in the same direction held that all the ideas required for a priori knowledge were innate in each human mind.

The term a priori is a scholastic term that has the origin in certain ideas of Aristotle; but their use has been considerably extended in the course of history, and their present use stems from the meaning given to them by Immanuel Kant. The term literally mean "from what prior." A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience. A Priori is a philosophical term that is used in several different ways. The term is supposed to mean knowledge that is gained through deduction, and not through empirical evidence. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1781) advocated a blend of rationalist and empiricist theories. Kant states, "Although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience only." So the apriori knowledge is the knowledge that is independent of all particular experiences. A priori knowledge is knowledge that rests on a priori justification. A priori justification is a type of epistemic justification that is, in some sense, independent of experience. There are a variety of views about whether a priori justification can be defeated by other evidence, especially by empirical evidence, and a variety of views about whether a priori justification, or knowledge, must be only of necessary, or analytic, propositions, or at least of ones believed to be necessary or analytic. It is used to describe knowledge that exists without reference to reality. For example a bachelor is an unmarried male, inborn knowledge, or 2 + 3 = 5 etc. a priori justification must rest on the justification that rational intuition, or insight, provides. In deductive arguments they provide the justification for the belief that the conclusion follows from the premises, and sometimes for the premises themselves. Kant thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. So he put forward that we can attain knowledge without any physical experience that is the a priori knowledge.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Britannica and Wikipedia.

KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND DESCRIPTION By Dixon Athiyunthan (B09003)

KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND DESCRIPTION

 

According to Russell one can distinguish the two kinds of knowledge in terms of their respective objects. One has knowledge by acquaintance of things, and one has knowledge by description of propositions. Russell also seemed to believe that one can have knowledge by acquaintance of properties and facts. Knowledge by acquaintance is neither true nor false and knowledge by description is either true or false. According to Russell, all knowledge of truths ultimately rests on knowledge by acquaintance. Although I can know one truth by inferring it from something else I know, not everything I know can be inferred in this way. We can avoid a regress of knowledge by holding that at least some truths are known as a result of acquaintance with those aspects of the world that make the corresponding propositions true.

 

 When one knows a particular shade of colour by acquaintance, for example, the colour is directly and immediately 'before' one's consciousness. There is nothing 'between' the colour and oneself. By contrast, one might know truths about Gandhi but one's access to such truths is only through inference from other things one knows about the contents of history books and the like. There is spatio-temporal gap between us and Gandhi. The contents of my visual field, the sensory character of, the capacity to touch, smell, hear and taste sensations, my thoughts and emotions are all held by most radical empiricists to be items with which I can be directly acquainted. In addition, one might hold that the mind is capable of directly encountering such abstract entities as numbers and universals. The radical empiricists typically denied that one can be directly acquainted with physical objects, items in the past or items in the future. The test of whether or not one can know without inference that something exists is described in terms of the conceivability of error. On this view, one sign that I cannot be directly acquainted with the physical table before me now is that my evidence for believing that the table exists does not logically guarantee its existence. My evidence is said to consist of what I know about my sensations, knowledge that would be no different were I dreaming or hallucinating the table's existence. On the other hand, 1 am directly acquainted with my severe pain because the justification I now have for believing that I have this pain precludes the possibility of my being wrong  I cannot hallucinate the existence of severe pain. To think that this pain with which I am acquainted is toothache is to apply the concept toothache to the pain with which I am acquainted. I can correctly or incorrectly categorize something with which 1 am acquainted, but the prior act of my being acquainted with the thing does not involve the possibility of error, because acquaintance does not by itself involve an attempt to categorize the thing in question.

 

According to Russell, all knowledge by description ultimately depends upon knowledge by acquaintance. But if knowledge by acquaintance does not involve the possibility of error because it does not have as its object something that can be true or false, how can it give us first truths? How can it give us premises (which by their very nature must be true or false) from which to infer other truths? Either knowledge by acquaintance does not involve the application of concepts and cannot therefore give premises for inference, or it does involve the application of concepts and cannot be distinguished from knowledge by description.

 

There are no facts that are independent of conceptual frameworks, some philosophers argue. The world is not divided into things, their properties and relations, indeed the only distinctions that exist are distinctions that we make out of the world with our concepts and categories. Referring to a fact is just another way of talking about a proposition's being true. To say that the world contains the fact, grass being green, is just another way of saying that it is true that grass is green. Only a structured reality could make propositions true and only acquaintance with such stricture would be a plausible candidate for the source of foundational knowledge. Many contemporary philosophers argue that the very nature of justification precludes the possibility of having justification for believing empirical propositions that eliminates the possibility of error.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (Courtesy: History of Western Philosophy)

RELATIVISM by Shibin Vandanamthadathil (09044)

RELATIVISM

Relativism is the belief that truth is limited by the nature of the human mind. For example, humans can understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviours only in terms of their historical or cultural context. Relativism is the concept of points of view having no absolute truth or validity, and has only relative, subjective values according to differences in perception and consideration. The term is often used to refer to the context of moral principle, where in a relativistic mode of thought, principles and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited context. The philosophy of relativism is invading our society today, avoiding the idea that there really is a right different from the wrong, truth from falsity. The plague of moral relativism is encouraging everyone to accept homosexuality, pornography, abortion, fornication and a host of other evils. Without a common foundation of truth, our culture will become weak and fagmented. Relativism is denial of absolute truth.  

Relativism is sometimes interpreted as saying that all points of view are equally valid, in contrast to an absolutism which argues there is but one true and correct view. In fact, relativism asserts that a particular instance Y exists only in combination with or as a by-product of a particular framework or viewpoint X, and that no framework or standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. That is, a non-universal trait Y. Notably, this is not an argument that all instances of a certain kind of framework do not share certain basic universal commonalities that essentially define that kind of framework and distinguish it from other frameworks. Moreover, relativism also presupposes philosophical realism in that there are actual objective things in the world that are relative to other real things. Additionally, relativism assumes causality, as well as a problematic web of relationships between various independent variables and the particular dependent variables that they influence.

One argument for relativism suggests that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever we can allegedly measure without using our senses. In addition, we have a culture bias shared with other trusted observers which we cannot eliminate. Relativism draws a true picture of our cognitive faculties. Our cognitive bias affects our perception of reality. Our understanding depends on the context, our abilities and duties. Relativism shows that our duty is relatve to our position in our society and our abilities. The duties of a soldier differ from that of a farmer. A man who can swim has the duty to save a drawnig person: but one who can't swim has the duty to call for help. In the course of growing up we acquire som estrong dogmatic feelings which are occasionally challenged. Relativism by stressing that our views can reflect the prejudies of our society provides an antidote for such dogmatism.

 

SOURCES

www.wikipedia.org

ACPI Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

SUBJECTIVISM PRAVIN N. Reg.No.B09031

One of the most recent epistemological points of view, one that is
growing in popularity, is called subjectivism epistemological
subjectivism is the claim that all knowledge is purely a matter of
perspective. The subjectivist may allow that there are knowable basic
dimensions (space and time), but we can only know them and the things
in them from a vantage point of the intersecting, and completely
unique, dimension of our point of view. Subjectivism, also called
moral relativism, is popularly defined as the moral theory that any
moral opinion is as good as any other. Philosophers use the term
"subjectivism" to refer to a range of ethical theories that deny that
moral inquiry can yield objective truths. Subjectivism is the
philosophical theory that ascribes to the individual mind or subject
and its sensations, ideas, attitudes, feelings, emotions, and beliefs
a privileged or preeminent status in the world order and in our
knowledge of that order. The subjectivist theory has been influential
in several philosophical disciplines, especially the theory of
knowledge and value theory.

Subjectivism is often very popular because it appears to imply a
certain level of tolerance such as in the way that we should be
tolerant of others who disagree with us, that everyone has a right to
believe whatever they wish without having to be dictated what sort of
things they should believe. This line of reasoning is often followed
by the statement that no members of a community have the right to
impose their moral values on any other members of a community.
However, the subtle mistake in that kind of thinking is that the idea
"we should be tolerant of other views" is itself a moral judgment, and
subjectivism does not prescribe any moral judgments. Subjectivism says
nothing about which particular stance we should adopt in terms of
tolerating others; it only says that whatever stance a person takes
will be nothing more than an expression of his or her personal
feelings about tolerating dissenting opinions.

A "subjectivist epistemology" is one that implies the standards of
rational belief are those of the individual believer or those of the
believer's community. Thus, subjectivism can come in either an
individualistic form or a social form. A key negative test of
subjectivism is whether an account implies that by being rational one
is assured of having beliefs that are more reliable than they would be
otherwise that is, more reliable than they would be if one were not
rational. Thus, reliabilist accounts of rational beliefs are
paradigmatically objective. So are traditional foundationalist
accounts. By contrast, if an account implies that the standards one
must meet if one's beliefs are to be rational are those that one would
regard as intellectually defensible were one to be ideally reflective
then the account is subjective. Similarly, an account is subjective if
it implies that one's beliefs are rational if they meet the standards
of one's community or the standards of the recognized experts in one's
community. Likewise, an account is subjective if it implies that one's
beliefs are rational if they meet the standards of the human community
at large, provided nothing else in the account implies that adhering
to such standards will reliably produce true beliefs.