Emily Simpson
Philosophy 2745
11-20-2014
Epistemology
For the most part, philosophers agree that knowledge requires truth, justification, and belief. However, the debate lies in whether or not a theory of knowledge accurately and fully satisfies these conditions. The standard account of knowledge has three conditions that need to be met in order for an individual to have knowledge. S must know that p if and only if: (1) S believes that p, (2) p is true and (3) S is justified in believing that p. On the surface, it seems that this account implicates knowledge; however, Edmund Gettier showed through the Gettier cases that you can believe yourself to be justified, but not actually have knowledge. This epistemic setback is known as the Gettier Problem.
Since the standard account of knowledge was essentially done away with, philosophers have been in search of the best way to solve the Gettier problem. Alvin Goldman in particular has published many papers detailing his thoughts on the matter. “A Causal Theory of Knowing” was the first in a series of works in which Goldman sought a theory that could handle Gettier’s cases. Unfortunately, Goldman’s own causal theory was undermined by his and Carl Ginet’s fake barn case.
The Ginet-Goldman fake barn case first appeared in Goldman’s “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge”. It describes a boy, Henry, who is traveling through the countryside and sees what he believes to be a barn. Unbeknownst to Henry, the area he is in is actually full of façades of barns. It is only by sheer coincidence that the barn Henry has pointed out is a real barn and not a façade. As a result of this, we become hesitant to say that Henry “knows” he saw a barn. (“Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge” 86-87)
We know that the fake barn case undermines Goldman’s causal theory of knowing, Goldman says as much himself. In 1979, he published “What is Justified Belief?” in order to present another knowledge theory that might defeat Gettier style problems like the fake barn case.
Goldman’s new theory helped form the beginning of an approach to epistemology called reliabilism. Reliabilism is considered to be an externalist, or outside the body, theory of justification and knowledge. The theory can be stated as follows: S knows that p if and only if S has a true belief that p was produced by a reliable process. A “reliable process” in this case is some psychological process like perception, memory, introspection, trust in word of mouth, or any other form of inference. Each of these examples will yield a high ratio of true beliefs over false beliefs. According to Goldman, a highly reliable process will give way to justified beliefs. In contrast, a belief formed by an insufficient reliable process will be unjustified. Reliabilism does not require you to know how your belief was produced, nor does it require you to have evidence. The justification lies in whether or not your belief was formed by a reliable process. Goldman covers several different versions of reliability in “What is Justified Belief?”, but this “process reliabilism” is most relevant in determining whether or not the theory of reliability can handle the Ginet-Goldman fake barn case. I believe that it is unable to do so. I went back and forth with my answer for a while. Intuition was telling both yes and no. Once I was able to piece together exactly what my objections were, I finally settled on “no” for a couple of reasons. My first issue with process reliability is that justification and knowledge rest on various degrees of reliability. Perception and touch would seem to be more reliable than memory or trustworthy word of mouth in my opinion. If a friend of Henry’s had approach him and said “don’t look, but there’s a barn behind you” and Henry took this to be true, then I would probably have trouble saying that Henry’s belief process is justified. Even looking to memory as a reliable process seems risky. However, Goldman suggests that these are both highly reliable process and will each result is a true belief. To me, this seems wrong.
You could also make the argument that Henry’s perception was not accurate. There are several different ways to do so. We could suppose that Henry has poor eyesight, and he left his glasses at home. It would be possible then for Henry to declare something a barn that is actually a house. You could also argue that maybe Henry was lied to as a child about the appearance of and what constitutes a barn. He could be picking out what he calls a “barn” that is actually a shed or some other small building. Finally, perhaps Henry is implanted in some virtual world, and he is really seeing merely the image of a barn in his head. Each of these scenarios makes me question whether or not Henry really knows that he has seen a barn.
Now let’s tackle the issue of the fact that Henry did actually perceive a real barn. As we’ve gone over, process reliabilism relies on justification through various means of belief forming processes. According to Goldman, as long as a process produces true beliefs it is reliable. Well, what if the next barn Henry pointed out was actually a façade? What if the only real barn that Henry sees in a group of one-hundred barn look-a-likes is the first barn? Can we really say that because Henry just so happened to accurately perceive one barn that he is justified in knowing he saw a barn? I think not. On the surface, process reliabilism does seem to work. It would have us believe that what we see ourselves and what we infer are satisfactory for knowledge. However, too many counterexamples can be made that suggest our faith in reliable processes such as perception may not be the best belief forming mechanism to base knowledge on.

Works Cited
Goldman, Alvin I. "Discrimination and Perceptual Knowldge." Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1992. 85-103. Print.
Goldman, Alvin I. "What Is Justified Belief?" Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1992.105-125. Print.