Relation to truth· Belief and knowledge
Reliabilism
Axis: Justification of belief — What makes a belief justified?
A belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable process, perception, memory, sound reasoning, even if the one who holds it could not prove it. What matters is not being able to justify it, but having been formed in the right way.
Philosophers 1
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Baconinferable
Before building, Bacon means to purge the mind of what distorts it: these are the four (), the systematic biases of knowledge. Idols of the tribe, inherent in the species, which lends nature more order than it has; idols of the cave, proper to each individual and his history; idols of the marketplace, slipped into thought by language and ill-made words; idols of the theatre, the received philosophical systems taken as so many fables played out on a stage. A belief is therefore justified not by tracing it back to a first indubitable intuition, but by the reliability of the process that produces it, once the mind is scoured of its idols and submitted to the experimental rule. The warrant lies on the side of method, not of an inner foundation.
Novum Organum, I, §38-68 (the idols)
Checking a judgment against the idolsRuleAttested · Bacon
Before trusting a judgment, ask what in you may have manufactured it.
In the , identifies four , four distortions that warp the mind before it even reasons. The rule: before trusting a judgment that matters, quickly run it through these four standing biases. Today it is a simple way not to mistake a well-settled impression for a reliable reason.
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- Descriptive SituationShould you believe it?
Faced with a claim we cannot check for ourselves, what would make believing it justified: being able to trace it to first-hand evidence, its coherence with all we already know, or the reliability of the source it comes from?
a claim received - DescriptiveMust you be able to justify yourself?
To be justified, must one be able to give one's reasons, or is it enough that the belief was well produced? An expert "senses" the right diagnosis without being able to explain it; conversely, we would hesitate to say he knows, the one whose hunches hit the mark through a power he knows nothing of. Does justification lie in the reasons one can give, or in the reliability of the process, even when invisible to the one who exercises it?
a well-formed belief - DescriptiveTrue by luck
The classic definition holds knowledge to be a belief that is both true and justified. Yet one can believe something for good reasons, and have it be true, without thereby knowing it: the stopped clock we glance at just at the hour it still shows, the rock we take from afar for a sheep while a real one grazes behind it. The belief is true and justified, but it hits the mark by accident. Must we then redefine what knowledge is, or tighten what we are entitled to demand of a justification, until it links belief to truth otherwise than by luck?
a belief true by luck