The concept of epistemic justification

The thesis of this paper is that there are two distinct notions of epistemic justification, namely, deontological and non-deontological justification that work together in a full account of epistemic justification that is necessary for knowledge. These two notions apply to different beliefs. The non-deontological justification applies to first-order beliefs, while the deontological justification applies to second-order beliefs (metabeliefs). From the external perspective, although a subject, S, needs not to have any metabeliefs that are the subject of the deontological justification in order to be said to know something, yet whenever S claims that she knows something she thereby expresses a meta-belief that is subject to deontological justification. Thus, knowledge claims that one ascribes to oneself or to others are always associated with such metabeliefs and hence with the deontological justification. If successful, this proposal would have explanatory power with respect to the clash between externalist and internalist intuitions in epistemology. It seems that these intuitions have its place and can be reconciled in one complex notion of epistemic justification.