Chapter 6 - Methods and how to individuate them

Summary

This chapter tries to resolve the tension allegedly inherent in Nozick's approach to methods of belief formation. First, it motivates sensitivity, independently of concerns about how to individuate these methods. The chapter then focuses on a few common problems for sensitivity. The chapter suggests that sensitivity must be relativized to methods and explains how the method should be read into the sensitivity principle. Nozick himself noticed, in the original presentation of his tracking epistemology, that sensitivity must be indexed to the actual method used by the agent in forming belief, or the theory will be a non-starter. Some commentators, including Williamson, have suggested that Nozick's own preferred characterization of methods undermines his generally externalist epistemology. Finally, the chapter uses the conception of methods in applying the sensitivity principle to the putative Kripke and Williamson counterexamples.