Winner of the 2002 FPA Graduate Essay Award: "Reconciling Coherentist and Reliabilist Intuitions: A Hybrid Account of Epistemic Justification"
Abstract
In this essay, I present two thought experiments that respectively cast doubt on the adequacy of the coherentist and the reliabilist approaches to epistemic justification. Next, I propose an account of justified belief that accommodates coherentist and reliabilist intuitions and avoids both difficulties. Finally, I test this account by measuring its verdicts against my intuitions concerning wishful thinking and induction and answer three objections to this account