Puzzles for Recursive Reliabilism

Recursive Tracking versus Process Reliabilism

Sherrilyn Roush’s Tracking Truth (2005) is an impressive, precisioncrafted work. Although it sets out to rehabilitate the epistemological theory of Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations (1981), its departures from Nozick’s line are extensive and original enough that it should be regarded as a distinct form of epistemological externalism. Roush’s mission is to develop an externalism that av...

Internalist Reliabilism

The Question When I take a sip from the coffee in my cup, I can taste that it is sweet. When I hold the cup with my hands, I can feel that it is hot. Why does the experience of feeling that the cup is hot give me justification for believing that the cup is hot? And why does the experience of tasting that the coffee is sweet give me justification for believing that the coffee is sweet? In genera...

Reliabilism and Deflationism

In this article I examine several issues concerning reliabilism and deflationism. I critique Alvin Goldman’s account of the key differences between correspondence and deflationary theories and his claim that reliabilism can be combined only with those truth theories that maintain a commitment to truthmakers. I then consider how reliability could be analysed from a deflationary perspective and s...

Reliabilism: Holistic or Simple?

The thought behind this is that there are many belief-forming processes, some reliable and some not; those that are reliable yield justified beliefs. Though this is how Reliabilism is often formulated today, and is similar to how Alvin Goldman ([1979]) initially formulates the view, a more sophisticated rule-based version of the theory is offered by Goldman in Epistemology and Cognition ([1986]...

What's Wrong with Reliabilism?