Christoph Kelp: How To Be A Reliabilist

Lecture by Christoph Kelp (Leuven), organized by the Department of Theoretical Philosophy

Abstract

In this paper, I aim to develop a novel virtue reliabilist account of justified belief, which incorporates insights from both process reliabilism and extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Like extant virtue reliabilist accounts of justified belief, the proposed view takes it that justified belief is a kind of competent performance and that competent performances require reliable agent abilities.

However, unlike extant versions of virtue reliabilism, the view takes abilities to essentially involve reliable processes. In this way, the proposed account moves in the direction of process reliabilism. Finally, I will provide reason to believe that the view compares favourably with both extant versions of virtue reliabilism and process reliabilism. In particular, I will show that in taking abilities to essentially involving reliable processes, the view has an edge over extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Moreover, I will argue that the proposed view can either solve or defuse a number of classical problems of process reliabilism, including the new evil demon problem, the problem of clairvoyant cases and the generality problem.

When & where?

Wednesday, 23 March 2016, 3.15 - 5 h
Room Omega, Faculty of Philosophy, Groningen