Ideas from 'Reliabilism' by Juan Comesaņa [2011], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Routledge Companion to Epistemology' (ed/tr Bernecker,S/Pritchard,D) [Routledge 2014,978-0-415-72269-8]].

green numbers give full details    |     back to texts     |     unexpand these ideas


13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge
Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability
                        Full Idea: The best definition of reliabilism seems to be: the agent has evidence, and bases the belief on the evidence, and the actual conditional reliability of the belief on the evidence is high enough.
                        From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.4)
                        A reaction: This is Comesaņa's own theory, derived from Alston 1998, and based on conditional probabilities.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / b. Anti-reliabilism
In a sceptical scenario belief formation is unreliable, so no beliefs at all are justified?
                        Full Idea: If the processes of belief-formation are unreliable (perhaps in a sceptical scenario), then reliabilism has the consequence that those victims can never have justified beliefs (which Sosa calls the 'new evil demon problem').
                        From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.1)
                        A reaction: That may be the right outcome. Could you have mathematical knowledge in a sceptical scenario? But that would be different processes. If I might be a brain in a vat, then it's true that I have no perceptual knowledge.
How do we decide which exact process is the one that needs to be reliable?
                        Full Idea: The reliabilist has the problem of finding a principled way of selecting, for each token-process of belief formation, the type whose reliability ratio must be high enough for the belief to be justified.
                        From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.3)
                        A reaction: The question is which exact process I am employing for some visual knowledge (and how the process should be described). Seeing, staring, squinting, glancing.... This seems to be called the 'generality problem'.