DIRK KOPPELBERG JUSTIFICATION AND CAUSATION 1. INTRODUCTION Coherence theorists subscribe to the thesis that epistemic justification con- sists in appropriately specified inferential relations among beliefs. In con- trast many reliabilists hold that it is the causal origin or the causal susten- ance of a belief which is responsible for its epistemic justification. A mod- erate naturalism strives for a convincing reconciliation of these two basic and prima facie conflicting insights; it regards epistemic justification not only as a matter of inferential relations but also of appropriately specified causal relations among the justified belief and its justifying items. 1 Keith Lehrer and Thomas Bartelborth have vigorously argued that any theory of justification which allows for causal considerations is deeply mistaken. According to Lehrer, to let causal factors play a role within the theory of epistemic justification is “to confuse the reason a person has for believ- ing something with the cause of his believing it. The confusion is such a common one that we might name it the causal fallacy”. 2 Bartelborth does not only try to show that a causal condition for epistemic justification finishes up a blind alley, he furthermore claims that there is no need for a conception of justification with a built-in causal factor. 3 In the following I will argue that all these attacks on a causal constraint on justified belief are not successful. In demonstrating why they are not convincing, I will pay close attention to Lehrer’s example of the prejudiced Mr. Raco and to Bartelborth’s example of the amorous inspector. Before turning to the respective details of these examples, I introduce some basic distinctions because the neglect of them is responsible for a lot of confusion in current discussions on the nature of epistemic justification. 2. SOME BASIC DISTINCTIONS When epistemologists talk about justificatory relations, they sometimes fail to distinguish relations between propositions and relations between beliefs. The term “belief” is often used to refer to either propositions or to beliefs of them. Anyway, I think that most contemporary epistemologists explicitly focus on the relation between justified beliefs and beliefs that Erkenntnis 50: 447–462, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.