We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Defeaters and the generality problem.
- Authors
Loughrist, Tim
- Abstract
Consider a simple form of process reliabilism: S is justified in believing that p if and only if S's belief that p was formed through a reliable process. Such accounts are thought to face a counter-example in the form of defeaters. It seems possible that a belief might result from a reliable belief forming process and yet be unjustified because one possesses a defeater with respect to that belief. This counter-example is merely apparent. The problem of defeaters is just a special case of the generality problem, i.e., the problem of determining which of the process types instantiated by a process token is relevant to determining that reliability of the process token. Drawing on similarities between cases that involve defeaters and cases that involve adverse local conditions, e.g., a white-out blizzard, I argue that any adequate solution to the generality problem for all cases that don't involve defeaters will pick out an unreliable process type as relevant in cases that do involve defeaters. Thus, there is no sui generis problem of defeaters for simple process reliablism.
- Subjects
BLIZZARDS; THEORY of knowledge
- Publication
Synthese, 2021, Vol 199, Issue 5/6, p13845
- ISSN
0039-7857
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11229-021-03400-4