John Pollock 's "Direct Realism"

"The problem of epistemic justification" is one of central problems in contemporary theories of knowledge. Various theories of epistemic justification debate with each other about this issue, including those debates between Externalism and Internalism, coherence theories and foundations theories. In order to solve the same question, basing on his criticism of these theories of epistemic justification, John Pollock advances his own "Direct Realism". Therefore, when studying Direct Realism, we can get a special perspective to understand various theories of epistemic justification, and more importantly, get a new way to solving the problem of epistemic justification."The problem of epistemic justification" is the question "how do your beliefs be justified?". John Pollock argues that only one’s internal states can determine the justification of a belief, so he is an internalist. However, unlike coherence theories, he denies that what makes a person’s belief P justified is its coherence relation with his other beliefs, and unlike foundations theories, he doesn’t think that there is a kind of "self-justified" belief. In Pollock’ view, on the one hand, both doxastic states and nondoxastic states can justify beliefs. On the other hand, "basic belief" is justified by neither other beliefs nor itself. It is justified by nondoxastic states, such as sense experience. Therefore, According to "Direct Realism", as a nondoxastic state, sense experience itself is a reason to justify physical object beliefs, and also justify other physical beliefs.There are two causes for Pollock’ regarding sense experience as a reason to justify physical object beliefs. Firstly, the failure of foundations theories indicates that we need to regard sense experience as a reason to justify beliefs, in order to explain how physical beliefs are justified. Secondly, epistemic justification depends on epistemic procedural norms and this kind of norm requires that each factor considered by it only need be an internal state. So, as an internal states, sense experience can be considered by epistemic procedural norms and influence epistemic procedural justification. These are two causes for Pollock putting forward his "Direct Realism".In this paper, we will introduce those controversies between externalism and internalism, coherence theories and foundations theories, elaborate systematically Pollock’ criticism of foundations theories and empirical clarification about epistemic justification centering on the question"Whether need and could sense experience itself be a reason to justify physical object beliefs?", reconstruct logically Pollock’ Direct Realism and his defenses of it, and, in the end, reflect Pollock’ theory. In our reflection, we find that, on the one hand, epistemic procedural justification can basic on Indirect Doxastic Volitionalism. On the other hand, those reasons to object sense experience itself as a reason to justify physical object beliefs are invalid. Therefore, we conclude that Pollock’s Direct Realism is a defeasible but undefeated theory of epistemic justification.