Toward a Synthesis of Reliabilism and Evidentialism?Or: Evidentialism's Troubles, Reliabilism's Rescue Package

Abstract

For most of their respective existences, reliabilism and evidentialism (that is, process reliabilism and mentalist evidentialism) have been rivals. They are generally viewed as incompatible, even antithetical, theories of justification. 1 But a few people are beginning to re-think this notion. Perhaps an ideal theory would be a hybrid of the two, combining the best elements of each theory. Juan Comesana (forthcoming) takes this point of view and constructs a position called "Evidentialist Reliabilism." He tries to show how each theory can profit by borrowing elements from the other. Comesana concentrates on reliabilism's problems and how it might be improved by infusions from evidentialism. This paper follows a similar tack. My emphasis, however, is the reverse of Comesana's. I highlight problems for evidentialism and show how it could benefit by incorporating reliabilist themes. I am not sanguine that evidentialists will see it my way.They might even view my proposals as an insidious attempt to convert evidentialists to reliabilism. Well, I won't debate the best way to formulate this paper's recipe. At any rate, it began with the idea (which anteceded my reading of Comesana) of creating a synthesis of reliabilism and evidentialism. It retains significant strands of that idea, although the synthesis theme does not pervade the entire paper.What is mentalist evidentialism? Its original formulation was succinct:[EJ] Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D toward p fits the evidence S has at t. (Feldman & Conee, 1985.I begin by raising worries about the notions of evidence and fittingness that are crucial to evidentialism as formulated by [EJ]. To help with many of the problems raised, I recommend supplements borrowed from reliabilism. As we proceed I shall also present reasons why reliabilism might be improved by doses of evidentialism. 1. The Concept of Evidence in EvidentialismA theory of justification that calls itself "evidentialism" and makes evidence possession its focus can reasonably be asked to explain which concept of evidence it means to invoke. If the only viable concept of evidence available to it introduces elements from a "foreign" approach such as reliabilism, this should provide some motivation toward a synthesis or unification with that approach. This is the situation

Experiential evidence?

“…One could require that the perceptual belief be the result of a generally reliable process (Goldman 2011), or that it be the manifestation of a competence (Sosa 2007) or capacity (Schellenberg 2013, forthcoming) or proper functioning (Plantinga 1993;Graham 2012), or that it result from a certain kind of cognitive module (Lyons 2009). Let me grant for the present purposes that any of these views would solve the current problem, of avoiding the sorts of counterintuitive result that we get from indicator reliabilism.…”

Reliability Theories of Justified Credence

“…belief is formed by a process that is not reliable per se, but is conditionally reliable (Goldman 1979). Consider, for example, the process of reasoning by modus ponens, which takes certain beliefs as input in order to form a new belief.…”

“…If the relevant type is forming a credence of 0.9 in a proposition about Darwin based on hearing a teacher assert it, then the corresponding reference class will consist of all and only cases in which Ida forms a credence of 0.9 in a proposition about Darwin based on hearing a teacher assert it (regardless of whether the teacher is a biology teacher and regardless of whether the teacher is Ida's teacher). Since different reference classes will yield different relative frequencies, whether Ida's credence is justified or not depends 28 The problem was noted by Goldman (1979); for more on the problem, see Conee and Feldman 1998. on which type is relevant. However, if there is no non-arbitrary way to pick out the relevant type, then it seems that there will be no non-arbitrary answer to the question of whether Ida's credence is justified.…”

Moderate epistemic expressivism

“…1 Evidentialism and epistemic value According to Feldman (2002), ''epistemological success amounts to having justified cognitive attitudes,'' which, in turn, ''amounts to following one's evidence'' (p. 382). On one understanding of what it is to have evidence, something is evidence for something else if and only if the former is as reliable indicator of the latter (Goldman 2011). That, however, is not how Feldman understands evidence, the primary reason being that he wants it to be possible for someone in an evil-demon scenario to be justified (and, consequently, also have evidence), despite being subject to massively misleading experiences (Feldman and Conee 1985).…”

“…7 Nothing said so far goes to show that no evidentialist about justification can be a veritist. See, e.g., Goldman's (2011) evidentialist reliabilism. The point is simply that there are forms of evidentialism (such as Feldman's) that are incompatible with veritism, because the particular theory of epistemic success that is invoked to explain the value of justification rules out believing truly being a goal of inquiry.…”