Basic Knowledge and Easy Understanding

Authors: Kelly Becker

Publish Date: 2012/01/04

Volume: 27, Issue: 2, Pages: 145-161

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Abstract

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 alltooeasy intuitively implausible cases of higherorder 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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