Philosophy of Religion Research

Reliabilism in Justification

Document Type : Original Research

Author

MA student of Philosophy of Science, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Reliabilism is one of the epistemological approaches, which is applied for analyzing both concept of knowledge and justification. One of the most famous justification theories in reliabilism approach is Alvin Goldman's. According to Goldman's theory, justified belief is a result of reliable epistemic process. But, we can consider a state in which, though a belief is a result of a reliable process, but the person has some evidences that above mentioned process, is un-reliable. Goldman's final analysis about justified belief consists of additional condition to adjust this problem. Reliabilism theory in justifying epistemic results as outputs and reduction of normative concept such as justifying these processes has a naturalistic aspect. This theory because of resorting to the concept of truth in definition of reliable process and considering justified belief as a well-formed belief is an externalist theory. Goldman's theory of justification has two problems known as generality problem and range problem. Foley and Feldman's criticisms about these problems cause to challenge Goldman's theory of justification and presenting other explanations of this theory.

Keywords

-

Alston, W. (1974), "Self Warrant; A Neglected From of Privileged Access", in: American Philosophical Quarterly.
Audi, Robert (1998), "Epistemology", in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Bonjour, L. (1992), "Externalism / Internalism", in: A Companion to Epistemology, ed. by Dancy and Sosa, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chisholm, R. (1977), Theory of Knowledge, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Dretske, F. (1981), Knowledge and Flow of Information, Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Feldman, R. (1985), "Reliability and Justification", The Monist.
Feldman, R. & Conee, E. (2001), "Internalism Defended", in: American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 1.
Foley, R. (1985), "What is Wrong With Reliabilism?", in: The Monist.
Goldman, A. (1992a), "What is Justified Belief?", in: Liaisons, MIT Press.
ـــــــــــــ (1992b), "Reliabilism", in: A Companion to Epistemology, ed. by Dancy and Sosa, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 ـــــــــــــ(1992c), "Strong and Weak Justification", in: Liaisons, MIT Press.
ـــــــــــــ (1998), "Reliabilism", in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
ـــــــــــــ (1986), Epistemology and Cognition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ـــــــــــــ (1999), "Internalism Exposed", in: Journal of Philosophy, vol. 96, no. 6.
Lehrer, K. (1990), Theory of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A. (1993), Warrant; The Current Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Putnam, H. (1963), "Why Reason Can’t be Naturalized?", in: Realism and Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sosa, E. (1999), "Skepticism and the Internal / External Divide", in: The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. Swain, M. (1979), "Justification and the Basis of Belief", in: Justification and Knowledge, ed. by Pappas, Dordrecht.
Philosophy of Religion Research
Volume 1, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
November 2003
Pages 73-103