ABSTRACT
An important question in epistemology concerns how the two species of justification, propositional, and doxastic justification, are related to one another. According to the received view, basing one’s belief p on the grounds that provide propositional justification to believe p is sufficient for the belief to be doxastically justified. Some epistemologists have, however, claimed that we should reverse the direction of explanation. This chapter proposes to see the debate in a new light by suggesting that the best way to understand the relationship between these species of justification is by viewing propositional justification as an (epistemic) dispositional property that a subject can have with doxastic justification as its manifestation. It will be shown how the debate in metaphysics over the question of how disposition statements should be analyzed runs parallel to the epistemological debate. Some of the results in the dispositions debate are then brought to bear on the epistemological question. Finally, some tentative remarks regarding the order of priority of these two species of justification are suggested.
