Huemer and Hearing God

Hi Andrew,

I take it you have in mind by the 'absence of defeaters' in (PC*) that S is not in possession of any defeaters.

(PC*) If it seems to S that God is saying X, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that God is saying X.

To show that (PC*) is mistaken you'd need an example in which something x seems to S to be F, S is not in possession of a defeater for the proposition that Fx, and S is not (even slightly) justified in believing Fx. There seem to be such examples. There are all sorts of unstable people to whom it seems that God is speaking and S might be one of these. These individuals are in general not in possession of a defeater for the proposition that God is speaking to them. Yet you wouldn't want to say that the deliverances of S's neurosis justifies him (even a little) in believing that God is speaking to him. Suppose you would. What, then, about S', at least as unstable, who believes that a Twinkee is talking to him because it seems like a Twinkee is talking to him and he does not have a defeater for the Twinkee-talk? Nonetheless, I don't think the seeming Twinkee-talk can be evidential. Consider a Twinkee world TW in which it seems to everyone (including S*) that Twinkees are talking to them when in fact they are not, though no one in TW (including S*) knows this. Certainly, the Twinkee analogue of (PC*) is false in TW. But S*'s epistemic situation in TW is not relevantly different from the actual situation of S' which is not relevantly different from the actual situation of S.

I used to find these sorts of cases convincing, but I don't anymore. I think that most adults have defeaters for propositions like that Twinkee is talking to me.

Obviously, most adults have defeaters for such beliefs. But that has nothing to do with the example, that I can see. I'm assuming that the person S' is suffering under a (psychological) disability of which he is unaware. Certainly that's possible. Indeed, I'll bet it's actual. Since it's possible, and since PC tells me that S' therefore is (at least somewhat) justified in believing that Twinkees are talking to him, PC is false. All the more so for the far more common belief among the unstable population that God is talking to them. That some unstable people fail to have a defeater does not entail that they are somewhat justified in their belief that God is talking to them.

Andrew,

I don't see that (PC) entails (PC*). For Huemer, 'seems' is supposed to be understood as picking out some special sort of appearance state (e.g., the state common to a veridical experience of a red object and an indistinguishable hallucination of a red object). If there is no appearance state that has as its representational content _that God is speaking to me_, (PC*) is not a special case of (PC). Is there really an appearance state that would be _illusory_ if an object numerically distinct from God spoke to you in a way that is indistinguishable to you from an experience in which God genuinely speaks to you?

That's something I suspect Huemer would say in response. Some of us would just say that (PC) is false and accuse you of condoning cannibalism and terrorism, but that's another matter. (I have a paper where I argue that because of Huemer's moral epistemology, he has to condone cannibalism and terrorism.)

One thing I like about Huemer's epistemology is that it's relatively easy to follow in real life. One can examine what seems to oneself to be true and believe accordingly. Suppose it seems to me that God is telling me to go talk to someone specifically about Christianity (or heck, about philosophy). Given that I have no good reason to believe that it's not the case that I ought to do this, ought I conclude that God is telling me to go talk to that person? If PC* is the case, it seems that I am justified in so believing.

Who said life was easy? I can't for the life of me see why having a rule that is easy to follow counts in favor of a theory that posits that rule.

Suppose it seems to me that God is telling me to put a bomb on a bus. Given that I live around a sufficient number of confused and dangerous people, I have no good reason to believe that it's not the case that I ought to do this. Ought I conclude that God is telling me to put a bomb on a bus? If I know that this is what God told me to do, ought I just conclude practical deliberation by doing it?

No. No. No! But, I get to _stipulate_ that the appearance is robust and no defeaters are available. (You can deny that only if you are prepared to make apriori pronouncements about possible psychological profiles.) I don't see how the reasoning I've just sketched is any different from the reasoning you've just sketched and it's only the crudest sort of relativist or terrorist who would say that I've just given a justification for putting a bomb on the bus, concluding practical deliberation by doing that/intending to do that/judging that I ought to do that.

By your powers of stipulation, you can stipulate what you'd like to, I guess. But, as a matter of fact, don't most adults--even theists who believe in a personal god who does sometimes speak to people--have powerful defeaters for statements like "God is saying X to me"? Even if God occasionally speaks to people, there are lots of people who have delusions that God is speaking to them. That's an extremely common delusion. And anybody who is aware of this has reason to be suspicious of the purported voice of God.

When we stipulate that S' has no defeater (he has no justified beliefs that Twinkies aren't the sorts of beings that can talk and so on), then I don't have the intuition that his belief is unjustified.

I can't see how you could fail to have that intuition. We stipulate that S actually has the belief that Twinkee's are talking to him and this is the result of his instability. Now consider S's counterpart on Twinkee world. There, in TW, it is evident that PC is false. Everyone there believes that Twinkees are talking to them, and they are no talking. But S's mental states are the same in our world as they are in TW. If S has a justified belief that Twinkees are talking, then he has on in TW too. But he does not have one in TW. So, he does not have one here.

I think I'm just missing the example. Is your main reason for thinking S''s belief is unjustified because it is a result of neurosis? Or because it is false?

Because it is the product of an unreliable process of belief-formation (i.e. neuroses do not in general produce true beliefs). The argument is straighforward, I think.

1. In TW (twinkee world) everyone has mistaken beliefs about twinkees caused by neuroses.

2. S is in TW and has mistaken beliefs about twinkees caused by neurosis.

3. In TW, CP is false. It is false that if it seems to S that a twinkee is talking to him, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that a twinkee is talking to him.

4. S is not justified at all in TW in his twinkee beliefs

5. S's actual beliefs about twinkees are also caused by neurosis. So, S's mental states in the actual world with respect to twinkees are exactly the same as his mental states in TW with respect to twinkees.

6. /:. S's actual twinkee beliefs are not justified at all.

Hi Andrew. I was talking about your stipulation that the person had no defeaters.

Here is what I'm thinking: auditory hallucinations are (relatively) common. And quite often the person having them identifies them as coming from God (or at least it seems that way to the person). Whereas instances of God literally speaking to people are extremely rare. Since I'm atheist, I think it never happens, but do you think it happens much either? So even if I had had no other signs of mental illness, if the voice of 'god' started coming out of my radio, I'd be seriously worried that maybe I had a brain tumor or something like that. And even a theist (I think) should wonder the same thing. I don't think that that's analogous to ordinary cases of perception of memory.

Or did you have something less literal in mind by "it seems to me that God is saying X," e.g., trying to 'discern' whether God would want me to marry somebody? I don't think that that sort of thing is analogous at all to perception or memory, and worries would switch to whether the putative 'voice of God' is some sort of rationalization or wishful thinking or something else I've dressed up as God speaking to me.

Mike,

Whether your (3) is true or not depends on how one understands the relevant notion of "justification" in PC. Michael Williams and Richard Fogelin have both argued, correctly I think, that there are two different perspectives we can take when considering whether S's belief that p is justified.

From an external perspective, having "justification" connotes an objective relation of grounding. This could be cashed out, for example, in terms of S's belief's resulting from reliable cognitive processes. In this sense of justification, your (3) is certainly correct.

But we can also understand "justification" in the somewhat internal sense of epistemic responsibility. This is the sense of justification that figures in Gettier's famous paper in which he argues against JTB accounts of knowledge. In this sense, S is justified in believing that p provided that it seems to S that p, S has no reason for thinking that not-p, and S has no reason for thinking it's seeming to him that p is misleading. In this sense, I think your (3) is false. There is no reason why people in Twinkie World can't be epistemically responsible. That the world they live in doesn't cooperate with their best epistemic efforts isn't at all their fault.

It is important to notice that these two senses of "justification" are not incompatible with each other. It could be that knowledge requires both, or less controversially, that some kinds of knowledge do. (Perhaps Sosa's 'reflective knowledge' does, whereas his 'animal knowledge' only requires justification as grounding.)

As for PC, it seems to me that the relevant sense of "justification" is that of epistemic responsibility, not grounding. So understood, PC is quite plausible.

Thanks Andrew. Yeah, that explanation helps a lot.

I think you meant "PC". Since PC is supposed to be a necessary truth, if it's false in any world, it's false in every world. I guess we just disagree here.

No, the truth of PC obviously depends on certain contingent facts. No one has reason to take PC seriously as a epistemological principle unless he has an antecedent commitment to the view that our world is not a brain-in-vat world, for instance. That is, we need a commitment concerning certain contingent facts about the world. If we are brains-in-vats, then our perceptual evidence is systematically mistaken and naive epistemologies of perception such as Huemer's are flatly wrong. If S is asked whether our world is a BIV world and he replies "hell if I know, and I don't know the chances that it is, either", then S cannot undogmatically assume--as PC does--that the way things seem are likely to be the way things are.

Alan,

I wasn't trying to trade on the distinction between internalist/externalist views of justification. PC says this,

(PC) If it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p.

Let W be a BIV world. In W nothing is the way it seems to be. So consider the following two claims.

1. In W, the fact that it seems to S that p is absolutely no indication that p is true. From BIV world.

Yet, you seem to be telling me that we should observe the following epistemological rule in W,

2. In W, if it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. From (PC)

But obviously I should not be observing (PC) in W. I might falsely believe that I should be following (PC). I might falsely believe that naive perception is evidence for the way things are--that there is some important link between it seeming to be p and it being p--but in fact the way things seem (from (1)) is systematically and absolutely no indication of the way things are. There is no evidential link at all between them, and it's pure dogma to insist that there is such a link unless proven otherwise.

Mike,

Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are implicitly relying on an externalist notion of justification in your critique of PC. That is, you take it that there must be an objectively reliable connection between justifying evidence and justified belief.

I don't think that that is the notion of justification that figures in PC. PC, it seems clear to me, has to do with justification as epistemic responsibility. And here I submit that BIVs would be epistemically irresponsible not to employ PC. After all, if they won't take undefeated appearances as prima facie evidence about reality, then they've got nothing left to work with, epistemically speaking. Sure, they're not in a good position to acquire much in the way of knowledge or to secure themselves against error, but that is wholly a function of external conditions. Due to factors outside their ken and beyond their control, they inhabit a world in which the epistemic deck is stacked against them.

It seems that you would counsel BIVs to become extreme skeptics. I would counsel them to hope for the best and to trust undefeated appearances as prima facie guides. For all they know, they aren't BIVs, so they've got no reason accessible to them for not employing PC.

Alan, you say,

And here I submit that BIVs would be epistemically irresponsible not to employ PC. After all, if they won't take undefeated appearances as prima facie evidence about reality, then they've got nothing left to work with, epistemically speaking.

Andrew (citing Huemer) says,

If you were a brain in a vat, then most of the things that seemed to you to be the case would in fact not be the case. Nevertheless, it would still be reasonable for you to believe those things, given your situation, and given that you would have no evidence of your being a brain in a vat.

Here's what I say,

No one has reason to take PC seriously as a epistemological principle unless he has an antecedent commitment to the view that our world is not a brain-in-vat world, for instance.

On what basis do I accept PC and not instead accept (PL)?

(PL) If it seems to S that p, then, unless S is has reason to believe he is not in a BIV world, then S has no justification for believing that p.

Obviously, I'm not appealing to externalism here. I am appealing to evidence S is (not) in possession of. I can see no reason except the so far unargued for assumption that I'm not in a BIV world. Huemer in the cited passage makes what I take to be the central error here. In support of using PC over PL (even in BIV worlds), he says

A. . . . you would have no evidence of your being a brain in a vat

That's true, of course, but to support the use of PC over PL, it would have to be true as well that,

B. You would have some evidence of your not being a brain in a vat.

So, to sum up, if I have as much reason to believe I am a BIV as that I am not a BIV, then I have as much reason to accept PL as I have to accept PC. Show me how that's mistaken.

Just in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not defending skepticism about perception as the right attitude. My point is that you need a hell of a lot more than the intuitive appeal of PC to defend it. Taken independently of further argument, there is no reason I can see to prefer PC over PL. You're going to need something like contextualist reasons or Huemer's direct realism or something like this, in defense of PC.

My problem with PL is that there are counterexamples. I believe that I exist on the basis of its seeming true to me. I can be justified in believing this without having a reason to believe I'm not a brain in a vat.

That's a counterexample? It looks more like an assertion. I wish skepticism about perception were that simple to refute. To anyone who does not already believe PC, it's just question begging. Let me put it this way. If that counts as a counterexample to PL, then this counts as a counterexample to PC.

My problem with [PC] is that there are counterexamples. I believe that I exist on the basis of its seeming true to me. I [can't] be justified in believing this without having a reason to believe I'm not a brain in a vat.

Andrew,

I had made a minor slip above. Here's what I meant to say:
Suppose it seems to me that God is telling me to put a bomb on a bus. Given that I live around a sufficient number of confused and dangerous people, I have no good reason to believe that it's not the case that I ought to do this. Ought I conclude that God is telling me to put a bomb on a bus? I know that if this is what God told me to do, ought I just conclude practical deliberation by doing it? Ought I just conclude theoretical deliberation by judging that I ought to do it?

We all know that there's something wrong with the following practical inference:
B1: God told me to engage in acts of terrorism.
B2: If God told me to engage in acts of terrorism, I ought to engage in acts of terrorism.
C: I engage in acts of terrorism.

You shouldn't conclude practical deliberation by performing that act, so presumably you either shouldn't judge that B1 is true or that B2 is true. But, as you know that B2 is true, it seems that you shouldn't judge that B1 is true. But, on H's view, isn't it permissible at the very least for some persons to judge that B1 is true? They have the relevant robust intuitions and have no available defeaters.

You might say that that's about practical deliberation. It is. Consider the following piece of theoretical deliberation:
B1: God told me to engage in acts of terrorism.
B2: If God told me to engage in acts of terrorism, I ought to engage in acts of terrorism.
B3: I ought to engage in acts of terrorism.

Unlike the previous piece of reasoning, this deliberation concludes with a belief about what ought to be done rather than an action. (Nothing turns on whether Ari was right that PD concludes with action.) Again, you know that B2 is true. So, it seems either you oughtn't conclude that B3 is true and so oughtn't hold B1 or you may hold B1 and so may conclude that B3 is true. (The 'may' here means permissible.) Presumably, Huemer has to say that you are permitted to judge that B1 is true if you have the right psychological profile. I can't see how he can sensibly then say that you are not permitted to hold B3. If you want to resist condoning the acts of the terrorist as being justified, you have to say that the following principle is false:

(L) You oughtn't both: judge that you ought to A and refrain from A-ing.

Now, you mention Huemer's arguments for PC. Among those arguments is an argument that obligations are all rationally identifiable as such by those who are under them. (That's from the APQ article.) Question: what about (L)?

____
There was also an issue of interpretation. When I said that I did not think that your special case of (PC) was a special case, what I meant to say is that the content of an appearance state was likely not going to have the following sort of Russellian content:

Similarly, I doubt there will be appearance states of the relevant kind that have contents such as _being a battleship_, _being from Jerusalem_, or _being John Malkovich_. So, I suspect that the justification for believing that God is speaking to you won't be basic or non-inferential. That's all.

Here's a link to the paper you were asking about. It's the short version I'll be presenting tomorrow,

C

Mike: No one has reason to take PC seriously as a epistemological principle unless he has an antecedent commitment to the view that our world is not a brain-in-vat world, for instance.

But we do have an antecedent commitment that we're not in a BIV world. This commitment is displayed every time we trust our senses as giving us reliable information about the world.

Perhaps you think this antecedent commitment requires prior evidential justification. Perhaps you think that we need positive evidence for thinking that we're not in a BIV world before we are entitled to employ PC. If so, then I think you're asking for something that simply can't be had. But what's your reason for thinking that we need this kind of antecedent justification? That's a substantive epistemological assumption for which you have given no argument.

Anyway, the reason for preferring PC to PL is not evidential but methodological. The only possible way we could have positive evidence for anything whatsoever is on the assumption that undefeated appearances are provisional guides to how things are. What else could constitute positive evidence? It is not contrary to theoretical reason to start out by trusting the appearances. It is self-stultifying, and therefore contrary to practical reason, to insist that appearances have to be independently ratified before we trust any of them.

The fundamental disagreement here, Mike, is that you take it that we need to refute skepticism, whereas I, Andrew, John Greco, and others think it sufficient to rebut the skeptic, to show that the skeptical arguments rely on assumptions that we non-skeptics are not rationally compelled to grant. Skepticism, we maintain, should not get a free pass as the default position.

The fundamental disagreement here, Mike, is that you take it that we need to refute skepticism, whereas I, Andrew, John Greco, and others think it sufficient to rebut the skeptic

Alan,

Very clear, here. I do not claim (and I hope I didn't suggest) that we need a refutation of skepticism. I'm entirely happy with a rebuttal. I'm entirely happy with reaching the conclusion that we have, on balance, better reason to believe we are not in a BIV world than that we are in one. What we disagree about is what constitutes a rebuttal. I don't think it constitutes a rebuttal to advance the view that,
...the skeptical arguments rely on assumptions that we non-skeptics are not rationally compelled to grant.
I think that amounts to changing the rationality rules. I guess where we disagree is that I do not take the methodological question as being epistemically different from the evidential question.

But you ask,

But what's your reason for thinking that we need this kind of antecedent justification? That's a substantive epistemological assumption for which you have given no argument.

My reason is really quite plain. In EVERY other case in which we have the same amount of evidence for P as we have for ~P, we rule that we should suspend judgment. BUT, in the particular case of the skeptical challenge, you want to change the rationality rules. Ok. But I think I can insist, at the very least, on consistency. Consistency about rationality commits you to holding that, in cases where there is a .5 chance heads and .5 chance tails, it is perfectly reasonable to pay $10.00 for the gamble [.5($15.00) if heads; $(0) if tails], (change the exact numbers a little, if you like). And, as any rational person can see, you'll be taken to the cleaners in no time; but by your lights, you'll be perfectly rational. That's close to a reductio, as far as I can see.

Anyway, the reason for preferring PC to PL is not evidential but methodological. The only possible way we could have positive evidence for anything whatsoever is on the assumption that undefeated appearances are provisional guides to how things are. What else could constitute positive evidence? It is not contrary to theoretical reason to start out by trusting the appearances. It is self-stultifying, and therefore contrary to practical reason, to insist that appearances have to be independently ratified before we trust any of them.

Alan, I had a question. Suppose you believe E = K. Can you consistently combine that with the further view that, "The only possible way we could have positive evidence for anything whatsoever is on the assumption that undefeated appearances are provisional guides to how things are. What else could constitute positive evidence?"

Mike: In EVERY other case in which we have the same amount of evidence for P as we have for ~P, we rule that we should suspend judgment.

I don't think that Cliffordian principle is right, for roughly the kinds of reasons William James gives in "The Will to Believe". If practical rationality made no claims on us, then I would agree, we should suspend judgment. But the question of whether to provisionally trust the appearances or not is a genuine option in the Jamesian sense. We've got to act either as if PC is true or as if something like PL is true. Practically speaking, we can't sit it out until decisive evidence comes in one way or the other.

Mike: Consistency about rationality commits you to holding that, in cases where there is a .5 chance heads and .5 chance tails, it is perfectly reasonable to pay $10.00 for the gamble [.5($15.00) if heads; $(0) if tails], (change the exact numbers a little, if you like).

Huh? I don't see why you think I'm committed to a Dutch Book betting arrangement like this. Expected values depend on both probabilities and payoffs. Suppose the probabilities of PC and PL are each .5. It is still rational to bet on PC if it seems like it would yield a higher payoff. How much it would be rational to bet depends on the payoff ratio. I submit that PC makes possible a much higher epistemic payoff than PL.

Hi Clayton,

I'm not really sure what to say in response to your question except that I don't find the E=K thesis all that plausible. It looks like a confusion of categories to me.

Perhaps what you're asking is whether we could replace "evidence" with "knowledge" in the sentence you quoted from me. The resulting sentence does look plausible to me, with the exception of the adjective "positive". I'm not sure what "positive knowledge" comes to.

Alan,

I don't accept E = K. (I do, however, think that non-inferential knowledge of the truth of p suffices for p's inclusion in your evidence and that the truth of p is necessary for p to constitute evidence. That's sort of a distraction but you might think we ought to deny one of these.) The reason I asked whether you took your remarks to be compatible with E = K is this.

You might think that:
(1) E = K is incompatible with the sort of principle the phenomenal conservative endorses.
I'd then note that:
(2) E = K provides an account of what constitutes "provisional guides to how things are" because it gives us an account of evidence.

The upshot would be that your remarks couldn't provide much support for the phenomenal conservative's view since the sort of platitudes you seem to think we cannot sensibly deny would appear on a reading to be compatible with E = K. (On readings where your remarks were not compatible with E = K, they wouldn't be platitudes we would be unreasonable to reject. Your remarks could be correct, but they'd be controversial and in need of some sort of defense. That defense would, inter alia, have to show that E = K is false.)

So, short version. What else besides appearances could provide evidence? The propositions we know to be true when we take appearances at face value and learn how things are. You said, "It is self-stultifying, and therefore contrary to practical reason, to insist that appearances have to be independently ratified before we trust any of them". That may be, but if you think that non-inferential knowledge of p's truth suffices for p's inclusion in your evidence and think that p's truth is necessary for p's status as a genuine normative reason/evidence, we can say that our evidence doesn't consist of appearances without adopting the silly view you (perhaps rightly) regard as self-stultifying.

Huh? I don't see why you think I'm committed to a Dutch Book betting arrangement like this. Expected values depend on both probabilities and payoffs. Suppose the probabilities of PC and PL are each .5. It is still rational to bet on PC if it seems like it would yield a higher payoff.

Let me spell out the problem. You have as much evidence that PC is true as you have that PL is true. Still, you seem to believ saying it is more theoretically rational (t-rational) to believe PC is true (or at least theoretically rational to believe PC is true rather than PL). Of course, I'd say that this is totally t-irrational. These options are equally probable, it is not more t-rational to believe that one of them is true rather than the other. If you really believed it is more t-rational to believe PC is true, this would be displayed in your betting behavior. You would be willing to pay slightly more than .50 for a .5 chance at PC being true = $1. Suppose God offered you the bet. If you believe it is more t-rational to believe PC is true, then He offers you the bet: .55 for a gamble [.5(PC) = $1; .5 (tails) = 0], and you can expect to lose. If you refuse the bet (or one very similar), then you don't genuinely believe it's more t-rational to believe PC is true. My guess is that you'd refuse the bet.

Alan,
Perhaps there's a shorter way to put this, if you'll allow me to talk about credences. You put greater credence (Cr) in PC than you do in PL, despite the fact that the chances that one of them is true is no greater than the chances that the other is true. Obviously, you should find it rational to bet more on those things that you find more credible, other things being equal. Since your Cr(PC) is greater than Cr(PL), then if the value of PC = PL (say, each pays $1 if true), then you should be willing to wager more on PC being true. (example: if Cr(Heads) = .6, Cr(tails) = .4, V(heads) = V(tails) = $1, then it is rational for you to bet .60 on heads, but not on tails.). But since your credences do not match the chances, you are bound to lose. Similarly in the case of PC and PL. You have a greater credence for PC despite the fact that there is no greater evidence for it than for PL. We can show that this is irrational by letting God set the bet for you between PC and PL, with equal value for each if true.

Mike,

Thanks for spelling your Dutch Book argument out for me. I don't think it sticks against me, however, because I grant you that PC and PL are on par as far as theoretical rationality goes. If I gave you some impression otherwise, that was not my intent.

What I've been arguing is that PC and PL are not on par with respect to practical rationality. When the question concerns epistemic responsibility, namely, how we ought to conduct inquiry so as to put ourselves in the best position (as far as we can tell) for obtaining truth and avoiding error, PC wins hands down.

. . . [A] When the question concerns epistemic responsibility, namely, how we ought to conduct inquiry so as to put ourselves in the best position (as far as we can tell) for obtaining truth and avoiding error, PC wins hands down

The thread is getting long, and I'm not sure it's worth pursuing, but we've reached a point where we agree that PC and PL are equally supported by the evidence. Since you do not know, theoretically, that our world is a PC world, I don't know how you could believe [A]. If I'm a BIV, then I know more by believing that what appears to be the case is in general not the case. In BIV worlds, my knowledge increases by believing that the 'perceptions' are merely artificially generated. In BIV worlds, I do not know more by believing that the perceptions are prima facie evidence for what is genuinely there. So, how much I come to know about the world by adhering to PC (or PL) depends on which world I happen to be in. Since I do not know what world I'm in, there is no obvious epistemic reason to opt for PC over PL.

Hey Andrew,

Yes, there was supposed to be a proposition there, but I think when I enclosed it within ' [God, F-ness]

H's account should apply to all beliefs, but if we are going to focus on the inferential justification for believing that God is speaking to me, I can't see that any view can simply rule out the possibility of that belief's being justified. I thought the interest in H's account stemmed from the promise that the basic beliefs could be justified and I thought that there would have to be an appropriate appearance state for such beliefs. It seemed a stretch to say that there would be such a state.