6 Strategic Reliabilism: Epistemic Significance
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Reasoning to true beliefs is easy, if all you want is true beliefs. An
individual will reason to many true beliefs if he spends time and
resources reasoning about how many Goodyear Blimps are in his field of
vision every second of the day (‘‘No blimps. No blimps. One blimp! No
blimps.’’) But as his hygiene and relationships suffer, it would not be correct
to say he is an excellent reasoner. Excellent reasoners reason reliably to
significant truths, not just to any old truths (Kitcher 1993, 2001). Many
accounts of significance will be compatible with the epistemic machinery
of Strategic Reliabilism we have provided in the previous two chapters. On
our view, significance is nonaccidentally related to the requirements of
human well-being. These requirements can be surprising and are not always
open to casual inspection or introspection (as we argued in chapter 3
and will argue in section 2, below). So our account of significance, like the
empirical discipline of moral psychology, must await further scientific
discoveries. It is fitting, then, that our account of significance is programmatic.
We will offer a framework for understanding significance that tolerates
our incomplete knowledge of the conditions for human well-being.
Reasoning to true beliefs is easy, if all you want is true beliefs. An
individual will reason to many true beliefs if he spends time and
resources reasoning about how many Goodyear Blimps are in his field of
vision every second of the day (‘‘No blimps. No blimps. One blimp! No
blimps.’’) But as his hygiene and relationships suffer, it would not be correct
to say he is an excellent reasoner. Excellent reasoners reason reliably to
significant truths, not just to any old truths (Kitcher 1993, 2001). Many
accounts of significance will be compatible with the epistemic machinery
of Strategic Reliabilism we have provided in the previous two chapters. On
our view, significance is nonaccidentally related to the requirements of
human well-being. These requirements can be surprising and are not always
open to casual inspection or introspection (as we argued in chapter 3
and will argue in section 2, below). So our account of significance, like the
empirical discipline of moral psychology, must await further scientific
discoveries. It is fitting, then, that our account of significance is programmatic.
We will offer a framework for understanding significance that tolerates
our incomplete knowledge of the conditions for human well-being.