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    Sellars and later coherentists conflate the genetic quest... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→DB alone is insufficient to fully account for the justification of basic beliefs

    Sellars and later coherentists conflate the genetic question of what causes belief with the normative question of what justifies it, a distinction Laurence BonJour later acknowledged undermines the demand for a positive account beyond DB.

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    Key Terms

    Coherentists(as the school of thought being criticized)
    Philosophers who believe that a belief is justified (reasonable to hold) when it fits together logically with your other beliefs, like pieces of a puzzle that all support each other.
    DB (Foundationalism or Doxastic Basicality)(as the alternative theory that coherentists were trying to avoid needing to explain)
    The idea that some beliefs are 'basic' or self-justifying—they don't need other beliefs to support them—and this provides the foundation for all other justified beliefs.
    Genetic question(as contrasted with normative questions about justification)
    A question about where something comes from or how it developed—in this case, what causes you to form a belief in the first place.
    Justifies(as what distinguishes good reasons from mere causes)
    In philosophy, to show that a belief is reasonable or has good grounds to be believed, not just that it's what you happen to think.

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    Laurence BonJour(as a coherentist philosopher who recognized a weakness in the theory)
    A contemporary epistemologist (philosopher who studies knowledge) who developed coherentism further and later acknowledged a major problem with it.
    Normative question(as contrasted with genetic questions about causation)
    A question about what should be true or what counts as right, proper, or justified—as opposed to what actually is the case.
    Sellars
    Wilfrid Sellars was an influential 20th-century American philosopher who fundamentally changed how we think about knowledge, perception, and meaning. He argued that our scientific understanding of the world and our everyday experiences of it aren't separate things but need to be brought together into one coherent picture. His ideas, particularly about how language relates to reality and how we know things, continue to shape modern philosophy.
    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

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    DB alone is insufficient to fully account for the justification of basic beliefs

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