Infinitism, Skepticism, and the Regress Problem

Abstract

It is a common view that rationally held beliefs require reasons sufficient to justify them. One debate about the nature of justification is defined by the Regress Problem, which offers four different accounts of the structure of sufficient reasons. I argue against the more popular foundationalist and coherentist responses to the problem, contending that infinitism, (the view that the structure of justification-conferring reasons supporting a belief is endless), can provide a viable theory of adequate justification. The version of infinitism I defend entails adopting an infinitist approach to propositional justification combined with a contextualist approach to doxastic justification. After the details of the foundationalist and coherentist solutions are discussed, I evaluate various versions of contextualism and describe how these different formulations can influence a response to the Regress Problem. To conclude, I articulate a contextualist-infinitist solution to the Regress Problem, arguing that this solution not only avoids the problems presented by foundationalism and coherentism, but also that it provides a viable account of how context-based factors influence knowledge claims by affecting our standards for justification.