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Reliability and Justified Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John L. Pollock
John L. Pollock*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Extract

The central problem of epistemology is to give an account of when beliefs are justified. Traditional epistemological theories are ‘internalist’ in the sense that they make justification entirely a matter of what beliefs one has and what sensory states, mnemonic states, etc., one is in. But there is a currently popular move in epistemology to import ‘external’ considerations of reliability into matters of justification. The feeling is that if a particular belief forming mechanism is to issue in justified belief, then ‘surely it must be reliable.’ Thus it is proposed that reliability is either a necessary condition, or a sufficient condition, or both, for justified belief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 103 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1984

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References

1 Theories of this general sort are proposed by: Bonjour, Laurence ‘Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1981)Google Scholar; Goldman, Alvin ‘What is Justified Belief?’, in ed., Pappas, George Justification and Knowledge Dordrecht: (Reidel 1979)Google Scholar, and ‘The Internalist Conception of Justification’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1981); Sellars, Wilfrid ‘Giveness and Explanatory Coherence,’ Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973) 612-24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘More on Giveness and Explantory Coherence,’ in Justification and Knowledge; Swain, Marshall ‘Justification and the Basis of Belief,’ in Justification and Knowledge, and ‘Justification and Reliable Belief,’ Philosophical Studies, 40 (1981) 389–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This theory is defended at length in Knowledge and Justification (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1974).

3 I have been unable to trace the source of this example, although I have repeatedly heard it attributed to Firth. Apparently Firth takes this to be an example of knowledge without justification.

4 My own inclination is to deny in addition that the boy has propositional knowledge. He does know who the winner will be, but only in the sense of knowing how to pick the winner. In the same sense a bicycle rider may know what to do in order to keep from falling over, but not be able to write a treatise on bicycle riding. This is practical knowledge rather than theoretical knowledge.

5 My own view is that they were not justified in the first place, but we need not press that point here.

6 There are philosophers who do deny that role, most notably Henry Kyburg.

7 See Pargetter, Robert and Jackson, Frank ‘Indefinite Probability Statements,’ Synthese, 26 (1973) 205-17Google Scholar; and Skyrms, Brian Causal Necessity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1980).Google Scholar

8 I have attempted to construct a satisfactory theory of direct inference in ‘A Theory of Direct Inference,’ Theory and Decision, 15 (1983) 29-96. 9 For a more precise account of the epistemic nature of these definite probabilities, see my ‘A theory of Direct Inference.’

10 Formally, if P is about Robert and Q is any other proposition, then (P&Q) is also about Robert.

11 This seems to be what is suggested by Reichenbach and Salmon when they talk about objectively homogeneous reference classes.

12 The principal defense of my view of epistemic justification is to be found in Knowledge and Justification, but see also ‘A Plethora of Epistemological Theories’ (in Justification and Knowledge) for some recent refinements. In my earlier publications I called rebutting defeaters ‘Type I defeaters’ and undercutting defeaters ‘Type II defeaters.’ Despite my repeatedly pointing out the need for undercutting defeaters, they have been almost universally overlooked by epistemologists. For example, in ‘A version of Foundationalism’ (in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1981) 543-64), Chisholm adumbrates a theory which is similar to mine in many respects, but which lacks undercutting defeaters.

13 I am indebted to Stewart Cohen for many helpful discussions on this topic.