Process Reliabilism and Its Classic Problems

Abstract

So far we have looked at versions of experientialism and versions of epistemological disjunctivism that agree in their analysis of perceptual justification as being importantly connected to evidence. Where experientialism takes perceptual beliefs to be evidentially justified by experience, epistemological disjunctivism takes perceptual beliefs to be evidentially justified by factive reasons of the form “I see that p”. Both experientialism and epistemological disjunctivism faced difficult challenges. Experientialism is confronted by a version of the Sellarsian dilemma: either the posited evidential relation between experience and belief is mysterious, or the distinctive justificatory force of experience is left unexplained. Epistemological disjunctivism makes perceptual justification too hard to come by, thereby precluding cognitively unsophisticated believers as well as demon-deceived subjects from having it.