PHIL 2100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Fred Dretske, Reliabilism, Philosophical Skepticism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2100
• Professor: Yussif Yakubu

Document Summary

Last week, we looked at an alternative form of reliabilism. It didn"t concern itself with reliable process, but rather reliable agents. The problem was that without the agent being responsible for something, it almost makes all knowledge a matter of epistemic luck. When looking for something stable, virtue epistemologist identified virtues, which were dispositions of the mind motivated by the desire for knowledge and reliably led to knowledge. This week, we"re looking at something a little bit different. What is in the set of contrasting cases (aka contrast set aka contrasting set) to the belief: the moon is made of cheese. The moon is made of rock: the capital of canada is ottawa. The capital of canada is toronto: you always have to prove that what you believe isn"t the work of an evil demon. Dretske"s argument goes as follows: knowledge is absolute, justification is absolute, the closure principle is unreasonable, cs =/= rs.