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    Why no true Reliabilist should endorse Reliabilism

    Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer and Dunn, J. (2023) Why no true Reliabilist should endorse Reliabilism. Episteme 20 (1), pp. 39-56. ISSN 1742-3600.

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    Abstract

    Critics have recently argued that reliabilists face trade-off problems, forcing them to condone intuitively unjustified beliefs when they generate lots of true belief further downstream. What these critics overlook is that reliabilism entails that there are side-constraints on belief-formation, on account of which there are some things you should not believe, even if doing so would have very good epistemic consequences. However, we argue that by embracing side-constraints the reliabilist faces a dilemma: she can either hold on to reliabilism, and with it aforementioned side-constraints, but then needs to explain why we should allow the pursuit of justification to get in the way of the acquisition of true belief; or she can deny that there are side-constraints—and in effect give up on reliabilism. We’ll suggest that anyone moved by the considerations that likely attract people to reliabilism in the first place—the idea the true belief is good, and as such should be promoted—should go for the second horn, and instead pursue a form of epistemic utilitarianism.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij
    Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2020 12:43
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:04
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40908

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