Abstract
Evidentialism and Reliabilism are two of the main contemporary theories of epistemic justification. Some authors have thought that the theories are not incompatible with each other, and that a hybrid theory which incorporates elements of both should be taken into account. In this paper I review the reasons for adopting this kind of hybrid theory, paying attention to the case of credences and the notion of probability involved in their treatment. I argue that the notion of probability in question can only be an epistemic (or evidential) kind of probability. I conclude that the theory that results from the right combination of Evidentialism and Reliabilism is neither Evidentialist nor Reliabilist.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Dunn (2015), Tang (2016b) and Pettigrew (ms).
- 3.
The equation of evidence with knowledge is from Williamson (2000), and the parenthetical regarding non-factive mental states is designed to make room for Williamson’s own conception of knowledge as itself a mental state. In what follows I omit the qualification.
- 4.
Supervenience may be too weak a notion to capture the essence of Evidentialism. The traditional definition of supervenience, applied to our case, is simply that there cannot be a difference as to what attitudes are justified for some subjects without there being a difference as to which evidence those subjects have. Combined with a mentalist conception of evidence and its possession, this yields the further supervenience thesis to the effect that there cannot be a difference as to which attitudes are justified for some subjects without a difference in the mental states they are in. But, plausibly, the Evidentialist and the Mentalist want more than mere supervenience: they may want not just the existence of a mere co-variation, but a constitutive relation between justification and evidence. If it turns out, say, that justification and mental states co-vary in the requisite way only because they in turn co-vary with a third condition, the resulting view need not be particularly friendly to Evidentialism. An analogy may help bring the point home. Suppose that we define Physicalism as the thesis that every fact supervenes on physical facts. That thesis is compatible with Cartesian substance dualism, as long as the non-physical stuff exists necessarily. Maybe the supervenience thesis is interesting in its own right, but conceiving of physicalism as compatible with substance dualism does not get the spirit of the view right. Analogously, one would have thought that Evidentialism would have to be incompatible with non-evidential facts determining epistemic justification, even when they obtain necessarily.
- 5.
- 6.
Conee and Feldman themselves hold that there is no such thing as unpossessed evidence. They seem to think of evidence, then, as token, instantiated mental states, rather than uninstantiated types—see Conee and Feldman (2008).
- 7.
Williamson has recently added to his epistemology the claim that a body of evidence fully justifies a proposition only if it entails it—see Williamson (2013) and Williamson (forthcoming a), and cf. Cohen and Comesaña (2013, forthcoming) and Comesaña (2017).
- 8.
Depending on one’s account of the basing relation, one may hold that the belief need not be based on an all three items of evidence. In any case, the main point is that the belief will not be justified if based only on the fact that Fred has gray hairs.
- 9.
Comesaña (2006) argues against this assumption that we can make sense of the reliability of a token process, but also notes that this will not help Reliabilists avoid the generality problem.
- 10.
Although see Tang (2016a) for more on how Reliabilists should capture suspension of judgment.
- 11.
See the preface to the second edition of Carnap (1950).
- 12.
See Williamson (forthcoming b) for a development of this kind of view.
- 13.
Compare Titelbaum (forthcoming) on the “Hall of different-colored birds”.
- 14.
I speak of “the” evidential probability function, thus committing myself to the uniqueness thesis in epistemology. As far as I can tell, however, the issues discussed here do not depend on this thesis.
- 15.
In Comesaña (2010a) I argued that the mere appeal to evidence could answer BonJour’s counterexample. To be more precise, I granted that maybe BonJour’s counterexamples did show that reliability is only necessary for justification, but I didn’t comment on the fact that this just means that Reliabilism thus conceived was at best only a partial account of evidential fit. In that same paper I adopted my previous answer to Cohen’s new evil demon problem presented in Comesaña (2002). In effect, my proposal there is one way to make contingent reliable connections into necessary ones. Given the necessity of evidential probabilities, this more roundabout solution is not necessary.
- 16.
Which is not to say that some self-avowed evidentialist would not be happy with a theory like this—see, for instance, McCain (2018).
- 17.
The argument in this paragraph is developed in more detail in Comesaña (2015).
- 18.
- 19.
Sosa (2016) criticized Evidentialist Reliabilism precisely on the basis that it, together with Evidentialism, assumed that all beliefs are evidentially justified. As the theory of evidence deployed here and developed further in the articles cited in the previous footnote show, I agree with Sosa.
- 20.
The issues here are intimately related to the “easy knowledge” problem—see Cohen (2002).
- 21.
The definitions are implicitly relativized to a time. That doesn’t mean that the theory is a version of “time-slice” epistemology, according to which which doxastic attitudes are justified at a time supervenes on the subject’s mental states at a time, for it leaves it open that past experiences may provide subjects with present evidence.
- 22.
- 23.
That said, if an Evidentialist is happy with saying that the item of evidence is the content of the experience, and that it is possessed in virtue of the subject’s undergoing the experience, then so be it. I have no problem with calling my view “Evidentialist”, but I want to make clear what conception of evidence and its possession I am arguing for.
- 24.
Many thanks to Kevin McCain for helpful comments on a draft of this paper.
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Comesaña, J. (2018). Whither Evidentialist Reliabilism?. In: McCain, K. (eds) Believing in Accordance with the Evidence. Synthese Library, vol 398. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95993-1_18
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