Scepticism and Reliable Belief

by Zalabardo, José L.

• ISBN13: 9780199656073
• ISBN10: 019965607X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. InScepticism and Reliable BeliefJos L. Zalabardo assesses the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and challenges their consensus. He articulates and defends a reliabilist theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition. Zalabardo's main analytic tool in the account of knowledge he provides is the theory of probability: he analyses both truth tracking and evidence in these terms, and argues that this account of knowledge has the resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning--including the regress argument, arguments based on sceptical hypotheses, and the problem of the criterion. But although Zalabardo's theory can be used to refute the standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which his account offers no defence, as it does not rely on any assumptions that he renders illegitimate. According to this argument, we might have considerable success in the enterprise of forming true beliefs: if this is so, we have knowledge of the world. However, we cannotknowthat we are successful, even if we are. Beliefs to this effect cannot be knowledge on Zalabardo's reliabilist account, since these beliefs do not track the truth and we cannot obtain adequate evidence in their support. Zalabardo ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution: although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition.

Author Biography

José L. Zalabardo is a reader at the University College London Philosophy Department. He studied for his PhD at the University of Michigan, was a lecturer at the University of Birmingham from 1994 to 2000, and then joined UCL. He has published numerous articles in academic journals and collective volumes, and is the author of Introduction to the Theory of Logic (Westview Press, 2000), and editor of Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy (OUP, 2012).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
The Problem of Scepticism	p. 1
Sceptical arguments	p. 1
The epistemic regress argument	p. 5
Sceptical possibilities	p. 8
The criterion	p. 14
Reliabilism and the Evidential Constraint	p. 18
Intuitions	p. 19
Perfect pitch	p. 23
Bonjour and the intuitive approach	p. 24
Epistemic rationality and responsibility	p. 26
Premise 1	p. 27
Premise 2	p. 34
Two further arguments	p. 37
Knowledge and Truth Tracking	p. 41
Nozick's analysis of knowledge	p. 42
Adherence	p. 45
Nozick's defence of adherence	p. 49
Methods	p. 56
Evidence	p. 63
Conclusion	p. 66
Evidence	p. 68
Probability	p. 68
Conditional probability	p. 71
Evidence and probability	p. 74
Incremental confirmation	p. 77
What adequate evidence is	p. 84
Inferential Knowledge	p. 87
Foundationalism	p. 88
Gettier	p. 89
Moorean inferences	p. 94
Transmission principles	p. 95
An idea from Nozick	p. 98
Closure and transmission	p. 99
Reflective knowledge	p. 100
Not falsely believing	p. 103
Bootstrapping	p. 104
Roush on inferential knowledge	p. 107
Knowledge without Evidence	p. 111
Tracking and probability	p. 111
Probabilistic tracking	p. 113
Safety	p. 115
Inferential and non-inferential knowledge	p. 118
Problem cases I: positive misclassifications?	p. 119
Problem cases II: negative misclassifications?	p. 126
Adherence	p. 133
Knowledge by default	p. 136
Closure	p. 139
Sceptical Arguments	p. 144
The regress argument	p. 144
Sceptical hypotheses	p. 146
The criterion	p. 150
Reflective knowledge	p. 153
Evidence for cognitive self-assessments	p. 155
Using S's evidence in support of assessments of her beliefs	p. 157
Evidence for CSAs	p. 160
The sceptical argument	p. 162
Scepticism and Realism	p. 166
The anti-realist conception	p. 166
Realism and cognition	p. 167
Anti-realism	p. 171
Anti-reductionism	p. 172
Stability	p. 177
Anti-realist reductions and the sceptical problem	p. 180
The middle position	p. 181
Two conceptions of cognitive assessment	p. 182
The middle position and the sceptical problem	p. 185
Appendix	p. 187
References	p. 205
Index	p. 213
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