Externalist Justification without Reliability, Micheal Bergmann
Bergmann, Micheal, ‘Externalist Justification without Reliability’ in ‘Philosophical Issues,’ vol 14, 2004, p. 35-60
p. 35 - Is concerned with the demon-world example; reliabilist notions of justification are open to the possibility that the agent could be the victim of a deceptive demon who justifies their beliefs even though they are formed in an unreliable way.
p. 36-7 - Proposes Objectivity as the answer.
p. 40 - Objectivity: ‘[S]ome unlearned doxastic responses to one’s evidence are unfitting and merely adding an unlearned connector to one’s evidence won’t change that.’
p. 40-1 - There is no necesary link between an experience and the content of a belief about that experience (the underlying assumption of Bergmann’s take on Objectivity).
p. 42 - The ‘fittingness’ of a doxastic response to evidence is contingent on the proper function of the cognitive faculties of the person in question. He does address the functionalism issue later.
p. 43 - Focuses on the notion of an input rather than that of evidence, which is sensible for an account in re functionalism.
p. 46-7 - Beliefs produced by properly trusth-aimed cognitive faculties do not result in fitting doxastic responses if the faculties are successfully aimed at truth; they must be operating in a world in which they were ‘designed.’ (Demon-world stuff again)
Kornblith, Hilary ‘Does Reliabilism make Knowledge Merely Conditional’ in ‘Philosophical Issues,’ vol 14, 2004, p. 185-200
p. 186 - ‘Reliabilism, according to this criticism, makes knowledge merely hypothetical or conditional: we have knowledge if we have a belief which is reliably produced. But the antecedent of this conditional, according to BonJour, cannot be discharged. Externalism is thereby revealed as “a very powerful and commonsensically unpalatable version of skepticism…”‘
p. 189 - According to BonJour externalists can claim, conditionally, that an agent knows that p if her belief was reliably produced but both the externalist and the agent are not entitled to the unconditional claim that the agent knows that she knows that p. The agent does not have first person access to the processes that produced the belief.
p. 190 - ‘According to reliabilism, Mary knows that p if and only if her belief that p is both true and reliably produced; Mary knows that she knows that p if and only if her belief that she knows that p is both true and reliably produced. Nothing about the first-person perspective is epistemically essential to knowledge, according to the reliabilist.’
p. 190-1 - Externalism is a theory about propositional knowledge and we should not change the goalposts when we move from knowing that p and knowing that we know that p.
p. 191 - ‘…the suggestion is that there is some important sense of “knowledge,” or “justified belief,” or “having a good reason,” which externalism cannot capture. And this suggestion, if true, would certainly still present a serious problem for externalism.’
p. 192 - We can know that p and know that we have no (internal) justification for that p and not be in any doubt that that p is correct. Analogy here with memory and initial justification carrying forward.
p. 199 - ‘The internalist assumes that if one doesn’t have some sort of direct first-person access to the facts which determine justifiedness, then one is in no position whatever to assess whether one is justified. But Mary is well-calibrated; she doesn’t just shoot from the hip. Such calibration requires that one’s judgements be regulated by the facts which determine whether one is justified; it does not require that this calibration be achieved in ways which are recognizable from the first-person perspective.’
