Theory that a belief can be called justified if it is formed by a process that is reliable, that is normally produces true beliefs.
This is an externalist account of justification if it is not insisted that the believer be aware of the method’s reliability.
This appeal to reliability may also contribute to an analysis of knowledge, though the questions of when a belief is justified and when it amounts to knowledge are different.
This is because to have knowledge we may need more than justified belief (for example the belief must at least be true, and even a method that normally produces true beliefs might on some occasion produce a belief that was indeed true but only by accident: would that still amount to knowledge?); also some knowledge, for example of some of our inner states, may not need justification.
Source:
A I Goldman, ‘What is Justified Belief?’, Justification and Knowledge, G S Pappas, ed. (1979)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 Reliabilism and Contemporary Epistemology: Essays
- 2.2 Structural Reliabilism: Inductive Logic as a Theory of Justification (Trends in Logic)
- 2.3 Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Contours of Christian Philosophy)
- 2.4 Process Reliabilism: Experimental Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience
- 2.5 A Theory of Epistemic Justification (Philosophical Studies Series (112))
- 2.6 Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism
- 2.7 An Externalist Approach to Epistemic Responsibility: Intellectual Norms and their Application to Epistemic Peer Disagreement (Synthese Library Book 411)
- 2.8 Social Epistemology and Relativism (Routledge Studies in Epistemology)
- 2.9 Knowledge Transmission (Routledge Focus on Philosophy)
- 2.10 Good Thinking: A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
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