Indicator Reliabilism

In 'Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology'Goldman offers a theory of justification inspired by the exemplar account of concept representation. I discuss the connection and conclude that the analogy does not support the theory offered. I then argue that Goldman's rule consequentialist framework for analysis is vulnerable to a problem of epistemic access, and use this to present an analysis of justification as an indicator concept we use to track how well the evaluated agent is doing with respect to the primary epistemic norm of believing truths and not falsehoods. A theory of justification along these lines is then given, and its prospects of handling the evil demon objection to reliabilism are assessed.     

Reliabilism in philosophy

The following three propositions appear to be individually defensible but jointly inconsistent: (1) reliability is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) on contested matters in philosophy, my beliefs are not reliably formed; (3) some of these beliefs are epistemically justified. I explore the nature and scope of the problem, examine and reject some candidate solutions, compare the issue with ones arising in discussions about disagreement, and offer a brief assessment of our predicament.

Greco's Agent Reliabilism

John Greco's Putting Skeptics in their Place presents an illuminating perspective on the nature of the skeptical problem and how to respond to it. Building on Ernest Sosa's Virtue Epistemology, Greco develops an account of knowledge he calls, "Agent Reliabilism". In this essay, I will take up several issues regarding the details of this account.     

Reliabilism and imprecise credences

Philosophical Studies - What is it for an imprecise credence to be justified? It might be thought that this is not a particularly urgent question for friends of imprecise credences to answer. For...     

Reliabilism and deflationism

In this article I examine several issues concerning reliabilism and deflationism. I critique Alvin Goldman's account of the key differences between correspondence and deflationary theories and his claim that reliabilism can be combined only with those truth theories that maintain a commitment to truthmakers. I then consider how reliability could be analysed from a deflationary perspective and show that deflationism is compatible with reliabilism. I close with a discussion of whether a deflationary theory of knowledge is possible.     

Process Reliabilism,Virtue Reliabilism,and the Value of Knowledge

The value problem for knowledge is the problem of explaining why knowledge is cognitively more valuable than mere true belief. If an account of the nature of knowledge is unable to solve the value problem for knowledge, this provides a pro tanto reason to reject that account. Recent literature argues that process reliabilism is unable to solve the value problem because it succumbs to an objection known as the swamping objection. Virtue reliabilism (i.e., agent reliabilism), on the other hand, is able to solve the value problem because it can avoid the swamping objection. I argue that virtue reliabilism escapes the swamping objection only by employing what I call an entailment strategy. Furthermore, since an entailment strategy is open to the process reliabilist (in two different forms), I argue that the process reliabilist is also able to escape the swamping objection and thereby solve the value problem for knowledge.     

A New Worry for the Humean Internalist

The Humean internalist finds Humean motivational theses and reasons internalism to be independently attractive. She therefore combines them, in the hope of creating a theory of reasons that is attractive for all of the reasons that each thesis is attractive. On this score, she succeeds. However, there is a drawback. Those who build a theory of reasons by combining Humean motivational theses and reasons internalism face a dilemma. If you combine these views, either you are committed to a theory of reasons that allows all of a person’s reasons to simultaneously change, erratically and randomly, or you are committed to a theory of reasons that fixes a person’s reasons at birth, in which case they remain stable and unchanging over a lifetime. Neither alternative is attractive. Humean internalism cannot navigate a path between these two extremes, and this should worry the Humean internalist.     

Reliabilism without Epistemic Consequentialism

This paper argues that reliabilism can plausibly live without epistemic consequentialism, either as part of a non-consequentialist normative theory or as a non-normative account of knowledge on a par with certain accounts of the metaphysics of perception and action. It argues moreover that reliabilism should not be defended as a consequentialist theory. Its most plausible versions are not aptly dubbed ‘consequentialist’ in any sense that genuinely parallels the dominant sense in ethics. Indeed, there is no strong reason to believe reliabilism was ever seriously intended as a form of epistemic consequentialism. At the heart of its original motivation was a concern about the necessity of non-accidentality for knowledge, a concern quite at home in a non-consequentialist or non-normative setting. Reliabilism's connection to epistemic consequentialism was an accretion of the ’80s, and a feature of only one of its formulations in that decade.     

On Aquinas's Theological Reliabilism

In an essay titled Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge, Eleonore Stump rejects the idea that Aquinas's epistemology is foundationalist. I agree with Stump, and share in her conviction that the Angelic doctor developed instead what can be seen as a kind of theological reliabilism. In this article, I intend to take her position a step further. First, I would like to show that Thomistic reliabilism falls into a vicious circle if seen as based on a merely rational theism. Second, I am going to argue that for Aquinas such reliabilism depends instead on Christian faith, construed as the act of believing the revealed truth by virtue of the love relationship that God allows human beings to have with him.     

The Generality Problem for Reliabilism

Philosophical Studies -