Evidentialism

Evidentialism is a theory of justification according to which the justification of a conclusion depends solely on the evidence for it. Technically, though belief is typically the primary object of concern, evidentialism can be applied to doxastic attitudes generally. Formulating evidentialism in terms of the doxastic attitude of belief its most-defended form comes from Conee and Feldman: Belief, B, toward proposition, p, is epistemically justified for Subject, S, at time, t, if and only if B fits the evidence which S has at t.

Criticism

Critics of evidentialism sometimes reject the claim that a conclusion is justified only if one's evidence supports that conclusion. A typical counterexample goes like this. Suppose, for example, that Babe Ruth approaches the batter's box believing that he will hit a home run despite his current drunkenness and overall decline in performance in recent games. He realizes that, however unlikely it is that his luck will change, it would increase his chances of hitting a home run if he maintains a confident attitude. In these circumstances, critics of evidentialism argue that his belief that p = Babe Ruth will hit a home run is justified, even though his evidence does not support this belief.