The diagonal and the demon

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

57 Scopus citations

Abstract

Reliabilism about epistemic justification - the thesis that what makes a belief epistemically justified is that it was produced by a reliable process of belief-formation - must face two problems. First, what has been called "the new evil demon problem", which arises from the idea that the beliefs of victims of an evil demon are as justified as our own beliefs, although they are not - the objector claims - reliably produced. And second, the problem of diagnosing why skepticism is so appealing despite being false. I present a special version of reliabilism, "indexical reliabilism", based on two-dimensional semantics, and show how it can solve both problems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)249-266
Number of pages18
JournalPhilosophical Studies
Volume110
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2002
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Philosophy

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