Online research in philosophy

Part of book symposium on _Perception and Basic Beliefs_. Responses to Terry Horgan, Alvin Goldman, and Peter Graham.

This article considers some recent objections to reliabilism, particularly those of Susan Haack in Evidence and Inquiry. Haack complains that reliabilism solves the "ratification" problem trivially, making it analytic that evidence relates to truth; this paper defends an analytic solution to this problem. It argues as well that reliabilism is not tacitly committed to "evidentialism." Familiar counterexamples to and repairs of reliabilism are reviewed, with an eye to finding their rationale. Finally, it suggests that the underlying dispute between reliabilism and its critics is the existence of a priori relations between evidence and hypotheses.

This article considers some recent objections to reliabilism, particularly those of Susan Haack in Evidence and Inquiry. Haack complains that reliabilism solves the "ratification" problem trivially, making it analytic that evidence relates to truth; this paper defends an analytic solution to this problem. It argues as well that reliabilism is not tacitly committed to "evidentialism." Familiar counterexamples to and repairs of reliabilism are reviewed, with an eye to finding their rationale. Finally, it suggests that the underlying dispute between reliabilism and its critics is the existence of a priori relations between evidence and hypotheses.

Forthcoming in Noûs I argue for a theory that combines elements of reliabilism and evidentialism.

Reliabilism is a general approach to epistemology that emphasizes the truth conduciveness of a belief forming process, method, or other epistemologically relevant factor. The reliability theme appears both in theories of knowledge and theories of justification. ‘Reliabilism’ is sometimes used broadly to refer to any theory of knowledge or justification that emphasizes truth getting or truth indicating properties. These include theories originally proposed under different labels, such as ‘tracking’ theories. More commonly, ‘reliabilism’ is used narrowly to refer to process reliabilism about justification. This entry discusses reliabilism in both broad and narrow senses but concentrates on reliability theories of justified belief, especially process reliabilism.

In this paper I present and defend a theory of epistemic justification that combines two competing approaches in contemporary epistemology: reliabilism and evidentialism. Evidentialist reliabilism, as I will call the view, incorporates the best features of reliabilism and evidentialism, while at the same time avoiding their most serious problems. Moreover, evidentialist reliabilism relies on its evidentialist features to overcome some of the problems of reliabilism, and on its reliabilist features to overcome some of the problems of evidentialism. It is, thus, not a chimera, but a well motivated hybrid view. Roughly speaking, reliabilism is the view that all that matters for the justification of a belief is that the belief be produced by a mechanism that tends to produce true beliefs. This pure form of reliabilism must face several problems. Perhaps the most serious problem is that reliabilism seems to imply that a “blind” reliable mechanism—that is, a mechanism that, as a matter of fact, is sensitive to the external environment, but that produces beliefs without the benefit of any conscious reflection, in the subject, of this sensitivity—is good enough to produce justification. According to evidentialism, on the other hand, all that matters for justification is fitness with evidence. Without an independent account of fitness, however, evidentialism amounts to little more than a statement of our pre-theoretic judgments about what beliefs are justified. Reliability without evidence is blind, evidence without reliability is empty. In sections 2 and 3 I present evidentialism and reliabilism, together with some of the problems that these theories must face. In sections 4 through 7 I develop evidentialist reliabilism and explain how it avoids those problems. I then consider, in section 8, some objections to evidentialist reliabilism, and argue that they can be satisfactorily answered. Lastly, in section 9 I specify the senses in which evidentialist reliabilism is an internalist theory and the senses in which it is an externalist theory..

For most of their respective existences, reliabilism and evidentialism (that is, process reliabilism and mentalist evidentialism) have been rivals. They are generally viewed as incompatible, even antithetical, theories of justification.1 But a few people are beginning to re-think this notion. Perhaps an ideal theory would be a hybrid of the two, combining the best elements of each theory. Juan Comesana (forthcoming) takes this point of view and constructs a position called “Evidentialist Reliabilism.” He tries to show how each theory can profit by borrowing elements from the other. Comesana concentrates on reliabilism’s problems and how it might be improved by infusions from evidentialism. This paper follows a similar tack. My emphasis, however, is the reverse of Comesana’s. I highlight problems for evidentialism and show how it could benefit by incorporating reliabilist themes. I am not sanguine that evidentialists will see it my way. They might even view my proposals as an insidious attempt to convert evidentialists to reliabilism. Well, I won’t debate the best way to formulate this paper’s recipe. At any rate, it began with the idea (which anteceded my reading of Comesana) of creating a synthesis of reliabilism and evidentialism. It retains significant strands of that idea, although the synthesis theme does not pervade the entire paper. What is mentalist evidentialism? Its original formulation was succinct.

We here propose an account of what it is for an agent to be objectively justified in holding some belief. We present in outline this approach, which we call transglobal reliabilism, and we discuss how it is motivated by various thought experiments. While transglobal reliabilism is an externalist epistemology, we think that it accommodates traditional internalist concerns and objections in a uniquely natural and respectful way.