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Defeaters and the generality problem

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Abstract

Consider a simple form of process reliabilism: S is justified in believing that p if and only if S’s belief that p was formed through a reliable process. Such accounts are thought to face a counter-example in the form of defeaters. It seems possible that a belief might result from a reliable belief forming process and yet be unjustified because one possesses a defeater with respect to that belief. This counter-example is merely apparent. The problem of defeaters is just a special case of the generality problem, i.e., the problem of determining which of the process types instantiated by a process token is relevant to determining that reliability of the process token. Drawing on similarities between cases that involve defeaters and cases that involve adverse local conditions, e.g., a white-out blizzard, I argue that any adequate solution to the generality problem for all cases that don’t involve defeaters will pick out an unreliable process type as relevant in cases that do involve defeaters. Thus, there is no sui generis problem of defeaters for simple process reliablism.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio (2010, 2014), Ralph Wedgwood (2011), Allen Coates (2012), as well as Max Baker-Hytch & Matthew Benton (2015). Jessica Brown (2018) also discusses this possibility at length, albeit critically.

  2. See Goldman (1979), Michael Bergman (2006), Thomas Grundmann (2009), Emilia Miller (2019), and Bob Beddor (2021).

  3. The first requirement is that the solution must be principled.

  4. Though it isn’t obvious. If the process one uses is completely insensitive to counter-evidence then, presumably, the beliefs it delivers are unjustified even before one is met with counter-evidence. But I won’t push this point here.

  5. There is another possibility. It could be that changes in local conditions don’t affect which process type is relevant but rather affect how the reliability of the process type is determined. For example, it could be that the reliability of color vision, when used in dim lighting, is determined only by the local reliability of color vision, i.e., the reliability of color vision when used in dim lighting. For more on this possibility and the distinction between local and global reliability, see David Henderson and Terrance Horgan (2011).

  6. See Michael Bergman (2006: p. 155) and Richard Feldman (2005: p. 104).

  7. See John Pollock (1974: pp. 41–2).

  8. See Jake Chandler (2013: p. 50), Gregory Wheeler (2014: p. 3), and Tim Loughrist (2015: p. 78). This is also discussed by Jan Constantin (2021).

  9. See Stewart Cohen (1984: pp. 290–1) for this suggestion and its subsequent refutation.

  10. For an example of the former approach see William Alston (1995), James Beebe (2004), and Jack Lyons (2019). For examples of the latter approach, see Mark Heller (1995), Erik Olsson (2016), and Martin Jönsson (2013).

  11. A full specification would likely be significantly more detailed. For example, in dim light it is easier to determine whether an object is red than it is to determine whether an object is blue (Pokorny et. al., 2006). I will leave these complicating factors aside.

  12. In her discussion defeaters in reliabilist accounts of epistemic warrant, Jennifer Nagel (forthcoming) makes a similar suggestion. The argument of this paper, along with Lyon’s solution to the generality problem, can be taken as further support for her position.

  13. The resulting view, it should be clear, is a form of attributor contextualism about justification.

  14. Though I’m not sure about this. I suspect that many would be disposed to classify it as guessing. But that’s just a suspicion.

  15. Jönsson is aware of this issue and proposes a experiment that would establish whether observers’ attributions converge on something like seeing-in-dim-light in cases like case #1. Ultimately, it is an empirical question whether attributors would treat case #1 differently from case #5. However, given that there is no apparent epistemic difference between the two cases, I hypothesize that they will tend to be treated in a like manner.

  16. If you don’t share that intuition, decrease the duration of the actual glance or increase the duration of the counterfactual glance until you do.

  17. You might worry that Hermes’ vision is unreliable since he is insensitive to changes in lighting. In that case, assume that Hermes’ is generally sensitive to lighting but rendered temporarily insensitive as he enters the dim room.

  18. See especially Stewart Cohen (1984) and Cohen & Keith Lehrer (1983).

  19. Since the new evil demon problem challenges the left-to-right reading of simple process reliabilism and the problem under consideration challenges the right-to-left reading of simple process reliabilism.

  20. This approach is first suggested by Goldman (1979, 1986). For more on this approach, see Juan Comesaña (2006).

  21. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this.

  22. I’m taking for granted that one must be aware of a defeater in order for it to affect one’s justification. If, as John Gibbons (2006) argues, this is not true, things become much more complicated.

  23. My thanks to the audience of the 2017 CSPA conference, two anonymous referees, Aaron Bronfman, Al Casullo, Luke Elwonger, David Henderson, Steve Swartzer, Adam Thompson, and especially Landon Hedrick for help in bringing this paper to publication.

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  1. Department of Politics, Justice, Law, and Philosophy, The University of North Alabama, Florence, AL, USA

    Tim Loughrist

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Loughrist, T. Defeaters and the generality problem. Synthese 199, 13845–13860 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03400-4

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