Volume V (2022) (2015)
In my defense, I am going to propose two changes to the traditional reliabilist view. The
first is to directly account for the importance of evidence. I propose that only those processes which
use evidence as input can be a reliable belief-forming process. In other words, having evidence as
input for a process is necessary for that process to be considered a reliable belief-forming process
(although it is not sufficient - the process also needs to lead to true beliefs more often than it leads
to false beliefs). Now, I am including existing justified beliefs as evidence because justified beliefs
can be traced back to evidence. If the input is an existing belief, then that existing belief must have
been formed through some belief-forming process. If we assume this belief, call it belief A , to be
formed through a reliable process, then some other input went into that process that resulted in
output A . That input is either evidence or an existing belief. If it is another belief, call it belief B,
then the same is true of B as was true of A . This cycle will repeat until, eventually, you reach some
belief where the input was evidence. Based on this observation, I will consider justified beliefs to
be a valid input for a reliable belief-forming process, in addition to direct evidence.
The second change is each belief does not need to be limited to one justifying process.
Instead, I argue that there are many processes involved, many of which are belief-forming
processes, which contribute to the justification of the belief output. Alvin Goldman says that
reliabilism admits to degrees of justification with no problem, s aying “We can and do regard certain beliefs as more justified than others.” 1 A belief-forming process does not make a belief
justified or not justified based on if the process is reliable or not reliable; rather, a belief-forming
process makes a belief more or less justified based on how reliable the process is. Following this, it
should not be an issue to allow multiple belief-forming processes into the equation. Each belief-
forming process involved influences the total justifiedness of the resulting belief, and how justified
a belief will be determined by the overall justifiedness of all of the involved processes taken into
account together.
To say all this more concisely, I am arguing for a view of reliabilism that states that a belief
is justified to the extent that it is made using belief-forming processes that use evidence (including
existing justified beliefs) as input and lead to true beliefs more often than false beliefs, and the
overall justifiedness is determined by the overall reliability of all eligible processes involved. To
show how well this view holds, I am going to go over the arguments against reliabilism made by
Richard Feldman and Earl Conee in their essay “Evidentialism” and see if my updated version of
1 Alvin Goldman, “What is Justified Belief?,” Justification and Knowledge , ed. George Pappas (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979), 10.
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