that there is a chicken in the vicinity. The concept of warranting plays a fairly important role in contemporary epistemology. Some philosophers have attempted to distinguish various forms of 'foundationalism' and 'coherentism' by appeal to what, according to each such view, warrants what. Others have attempted to analyse the concept of self-warrant by reference to the concept of warranting. Finally, we may wish to explain the absolute concept of warranting, expressible by 'p warrants q', by appeal to our relational notion of p warranting q for S at t.
Before we turn to a consideration of a proposed analysis of the concept of warranting, let us reflect briefly on some pre-analytic data.
- One datum has to do with an epistemic analogue of causal overdetermination. Just as it is possible for there to be two causally independent, independently causally sufficient conditions for a single effect, so throe may be two epistemically independent, independently warranting propositions for a single warranted proposition. That is, there may be propositions p, q, and r, such that p warrants q for S at t, r warrants q for S at t, but neither does p warrant r, nor does r warrant p for S at t. As an example of Synthese 34 (โข977) 497-5โข2.