Basic Knowledge and Easy Understanding
- Kelly Becker
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Reliabilism is a theory that countenances basic knowledge, that is, knowledge from a reliable source, without requiring that the agent knows the source is reliable. Critics (especially Cohen 2002) have argued that such theories generate all-too-easy, intuitively implausible cases of higher-order knowledge based on inference from basic knowledge. For present purposes, the criticism might be recast as claiming that reliabilism implausibly generates cases of understanding from brute, basic knowledge. I argue that the easy knowledge (or easy understanding) criticism rests on an implicit mischaracterization of the notion of a reliable process. Properly understood, reliable processes do not permit the transition from basic knowledge to understanding based on inference.
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- Basic Knowledge and Easy Understanding
Volume 27, Issue 2 , pp 145-161
- Cover Date
- Print ISSN
- Online ISSN
- Springer Netherlands
- Additional Links
- Basic knowledge
- Easy knowledge
- Epistemic closure
- Higher-order knowledge
- Kelly Becker (1)
- Author Affiliations
- 1. Department of Philosophy MSC 03 2140, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001, New Mexico