Reliabilism Research Articles

Naturalistic inquiry and reliabilism: a compatible epistemological grounding.

In this brief analysis, the authors suggest that naturalistic inquiry as a field must return to a more rigorous interpretation of epistemological issues. The need is highlighted by the fact that ideological and methodological claims are increasingly becoming conflated. This produces a distancing of what is truly at stake: a need to defend a genuine epistemological theory consistent with the aims of naturalistic perspectives and establish some ontological commitments as a result. The authors argue that the epistemological theory of process reliabilism is worth examining critically. They also suggest its consistency with the ontological claims of minimal realism.

What Does the Generality Problem Show?

Richard Feldman and Earl Conee advance the following argument: P1. Process Reliabilism is tenable only if it can provide a solution to the Generality Problem. P2. No solution to the Generality Problem exists. C. Process Reliabilism is untenable. I argue that this argument is unsound. Premise one is false; it depends on further internalist premises that the proponent of Process Reliabilism, a paradigmatically externalist theory of epistemic justification, can reject.

Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism

Mesurant le developpement de la theorie de la connaissance en ce qui concerne la fiabilite des processus de formation de la croyance, l'A. propose un apercu fondamental sur les epistemologies fiabilistes, attribuant le statut de connaissance vraie a la croyance vraie non justifiee. Soulevant la question d'un recentrement de l'epistemologie a partir de la substitution de l'idee de fiabilite des processus de formation de la croyance aux theorie traditionnelles des bonnes raisons de croire, l'A. montre qu'on ne peut remplacer les concepts de raison, evidence, inference, justification par celui de fiabilite sans courrir le risque des faiblesses conceptuelles de la croyance concernant leur structure inferentielle

Process Reliabilism and Cartesian Scepticism

I will be concerned here with a theory of doxastic justification that was first proposed by Alvin Goldman in 1979.1 This theory, which is generally known as process reliabilism, has in recent years gone through a number of changes, and each change has added significantly to its complexity and subtlety. However, for present purposes it suffices to consider a skeletal version of the theory that is similar to the version that was unveiled in Goldman's original advertisement. This version runs as follows: where S is any subject, and p is any proposition, S is justified in believing that p if and only if (i) S believes that p, (ii) S has this belief as the result of a cognitive process that is highly reliable, (iii) S is not in possession of any reliably formed beliefs that imply either that p is false or that the process mentioned in (ii) is unreliable, and (iv) S could not easily come into possession of any beliefs of the sorts mentioned in (iii).2 As is usual, I am here using epistemically

Reliabilism and induction

Contre le scepticisme de Hume concernant la legitimite de la connaissance inductive, l'A. propose une solution fiabiliste au probleme de la justification de l'induction, qui autorise la these de la projectibilite

Reliabilism, Induction and Scepticism

Reliabilism, Induction and Scepticism

The trouble with Goldman's reliabilism

The trouble with Goldman's reliabilism

Reliabilism and relevant worlds

Reliabilism and relevant worlds

Foundationalism, conceptual regress, and reliabilism

Foundationalism, conceptual regress, and reliabilism

Foundationalism, Conceptual Regress, and Reliabilism

Foundationalism, Conceptual Regress, and Reliabilism

A Rationale for Reliabilism

A Rationale for Reliabilism

Is epistemological reliabilism consistent with grammatical evidentiality and conjunct/ disjunct marking?

The paper discusses how evidentiality and conjunct/disjunct marking in grammar are related to reliabilism, a contemporary theory of epistemic justification developed within the Anglo-American analytic tradition. It is assumed that many problems and ideas concerned with theories of knowledge, and with justification of beliefs in particular, which are widely discussed in contemporary philosophical debates, are worth reconsidering in the light of what grammars of natural languages impose on the epistemic agent. Section two explains how the notions of knowledge, belief and justification are understood in the paper. The section also outlines the major problems concerning the internalist justification of beliefs. Section three presents an externalist view on the problem of justification: process reliabilism. The reliabilist theory of justification is set in the context of two grammatical categories: evidentiality and conjunct/disjunct marking (egophoricity). Since the two categories are still little known, section four offers a brief presentation of evidentiality and egophoricity in grammar, illustrated with data from two languages. Finally, section five addresses the problem whether the premises of reliabilism are reconcilable with ‘natural epistemology’ encoded in grammar. The final conclusion says that the externalist premises of reliabilism are certainly not congruent with grammatical evidentiality and evidentialityrelated categories, but they are not logically inconsistent therewith. Furthermore, since the reliabilist program declares interest in ‘folk epistemic practices’, the approach might greatly benefit from what ‘natural epistemology’ tells us about epistemic folk concepts and epistemic practices employed by speakers of diverse world languages.