| This dissertation project aims to defend and develop the philosophical theory of justified belief known as 'reliabilism.' Reliabilism is the view that beliefs are justified just when they are produced by reliable belief-forming cognitive processes---i.e., processes which would produce true beliefs most of the time. This view is opposed to more traditional views of epistemic justification, according to which beliefs are justified if they are supported by sufficient evidence, are self-evident, or are deducible from self-evident beliefs. Reliabilism has been the most widely discussed epistemological theory of the last two decades and has been sharply criticized by many. The first half of the dissertation defends reliabilism against some of the major objections to the theory and the second half suggests new directions in which it might be developed.; The first chapter of the dissertation charts the birth and early development of reliabilism, providing an introduction to the theory and some of the main issues in contemporary epistemology. The second chapter, "Reliabilism, Truetemp and New Perceptual Faculties," rebuts the most common objection to reliabilism, viz., that reliability may be necessary but is not sufficient for justified belief. Chapter three, "The Generality Problem, Statistical Relevance and the Tri-Level Hypothesis," attempts to solve the problem of how to divide cognitive processes into the right process types. Chapter four, "Reliabilism and Truth," analyzes the relation between the epistemological theory of reliabilism and various theories of truth that have been put forward in the contemporary debate about truth. In the final chapter, "Interpretation and Epistemic Evaluation in Goldman's Scientific Epistemology," I chart a new, more scientifically oriented, direction for reliabilist epistemology and suggest several ways that epistemologists can benefit from various research programs in the social sciences. |
