ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to a defense of dogmatism by examining some of its salient features in the light of the account of the dispositional architecture of epistemic reasons developed in Part I of the book. It will explain how certain well-known features of dogmatism, such as the ‘immediacy’ of perceptual justification, naturally fall out from the dispositional structure of perceptual reasons. It will be argued that, while dogmatists often appeal to examples to defend their position, the dispositional framework can provide a principled defense of the dogmatists’ main theses such as the theses that experience provides justification in virtue of its phenomenal character which in turn grounds its representational content, or that perceptual experience justifies belief in its content in virtue of presenting that content with ‘presentational force.’ Furthermore, given dogmatism’s adherence to justification internalism, this chapter also pays particular attention to some recent attempts to undermine justification internalism by distinguishing between rationality and justification and confining the internalist intuitions to the domain of rationality. It will be argued that our account of reason-possession can thwart such attempts. Finally, a response is made to an important problem raised for dogmatism by the phenomenon of cognitive penetration.
