Justifying Basic Belief Forming Processes

Abstract

Reliabilist accounts of epistemic justification have come under heavy attack: it has been claimed that it is impossible to establish the reliability of certain basic belief producing processes (like, e.g. perception or memory) in a noncircular way. From this it has been concluded without further ado that the belief in the reliability of such basic processes cannot be justified. In this paper I shall concede that the reliability of certain basic belief producing processes cannot be established in a noncircular fashion, but I shall argue that the circularity involved is not vicious and therefore does not prevent us from having justified beliefs about the reliability of basic belief producing processes.