1. Skepticism

Any epistemological theory worthy of the name must address the skeptical

challenge. The skeptic begins with a fund of presumptively justified beliefs and

proceeds to argue that one can’t legitimately make inferences that go beyond

that evidence. For example, a skeptic about the material world argues that on

the basis of our sensory beliefs, we can equally well support the brain-in-thevat

hypothesis, the ideational world hypothesis, the evil demon hypothesis, the

material world hypothesis, etc. All of these hypotheses are underdetermined by

the evidence. The skeptical challenge is that since the evidence does not

support any one of these hypotheses over any other, we cannot justifiably

believe any of them.

A central problem with naturalistic approaches to epistemology, including

the one defended in this book, is that they fail to address the skeptical

challenge. Naturalists begin their epistemological investigations by making

substantive assumptions that skeptics are unwilling to grant: that there is a

material world, that there are other minds, etc. You face a dilemma. Either

you ignore the skeptical challenge, in which case your theory does not deserve

to be called an epistemological theory, or you beg the question against the

skeptic.

Let’s begin with a ‘‘live and let live’’ response to the skeptical problem.

Our approach to epistemology does not provide a solution to skepticism.

But what do we really want from an epistemological theory? It would

certainly be nice to have a theory that solved the problem of skepticism.

But it would also be nice to have a theory that provided useful guidance to

reasoners. An epistemological theory that provided a framework for how

to reason in an excellent manner could have many practical benefits. It

could provide a framework for thinking about diagnosis that led to better

medical outcomes, a framework for thinking about parole board decisions

that led to a less violent society, a framework for thinking about public

policy that helped the electorate support policies that better serve its

values, and so on. Now, one might legitimately wonder whether a useful

reason-guiding theory is possible; but one might equally well wonder

whether a theory that solves the problem of skepticism is possible. Our

point is that if philosophers insist that a theory of reasoning excellence

that has this ameliorative aim is not epistemology, well then, so much the

worse for epistemology.

The ‘‘live and let live’’ response notes that many successful theories

don’t do everything we might like them to do. Newton’s theory of motion was highly successful even though it does not explain all physical phenomena

(e.g., electromagnetic phenomena). So a theory of reasoning excellence

might be highly successful at providing useful guidance to

reasoners even though it does not solve some other epistemological

problems. In particular, it might well not solve the skeptical problem. So

we admit that we don’t have a solution to the skeptical challenge, but

we’re proposing a theory that aims to meet a different goal. Unless one

rejects this as a legitimate goal of epistemology, then the skeptic’s criticism

fails to uncover a problem with any theory, naturalistic or not, that has

this goal. And of course that includes Strategic Reliabilism.

The ‘‘live and let live’’ response is problematic for any naturalistic theory, like

yours, that takes reasoning excellence to be partly determined by the reliability

of reasoning strategies. You argue that according to Strategic Reliabilism,

one ought to use Goldberg’s Rule in making tentative diagnoses of

psychiatric patients on the basis of the MMPI. That’s because Goldberg’s Rule

has low costs and is reliable on problems that are significant. But the skeptic

can reformulate her challenge so that it is about reasoning excellence. If a

skeptical hypothesis is true, if, for example, there are no other minds or other

people, then Goldberg’s Rule would not be reliable after all. Given this possibility,

how could we ever know how to reason in an excellent fashion? The

problem with the ‘‘live and let live’’ response is that it fails to recognize that

the skeptical problem is so pervasive that it cannot be sidestepped or avoided.

In the face of this challenge, our inclination is to restrict our theory to

normal worlds—that is, non-skeptical worlds that are presumed to be like

our own (Goldman 1986, 107–9). A reasoning strategy is reliable when it

has a high truth ratio on the assumption that the world is as we presume it

to be, i.e., nonskeptical.

But the move to ‘‘normal worlds’’ is cheating. You escape the skeptical

challenge simply by ruling by fiat that the skeptical hypotheses are false. Is

there some principled reason that warrants the move to ‘‘normal worlds’’? Or

is this move simply motivated by the understandable but unprincipled desire

to avoid a difficult problem?

Technically, we are not ruling that the skeptical hypotheses are false. Our

point is that judgments of reasoning excellence are insensitive to whether

or not a skeptical hypothesis is true. There are two principled reasons for

this move to normal, non-skeptical worlds. First, the goal of Strategic Reliabilism is not to solve the problem of skepticism. It aims to be a useful

reason-guiding theory. This is a legitimate goal of epistemology. Strategic

Reliabilism should be assessed in terms of whether it meets this goal. If it

does, then the fact that it does not meet a different goal (solving the skeptical

problem) does not by itself give us a reason to doubt it. Rather, it

suggests that the epistemological theory that guides reasoning is not the

theory that will solve the problem of skepticism. Second, recall that Strategic

Reliabilism is supposed to articulate the normative principles that

guide the prescriptions of Ameliorative Psychology. A cursory examination

of Ameliorative Psychology makes evident that it ignores the skeptical

challenge; for example, it employs the processes and categories of contemporary

psychology. So given that our aim is to articulate the normative

presuppositions of Ameliorative Psychology, it is perfectly reasonable for

our theory to ignore the possibility of skepticism if the sciences does. And

the science does.

There are good, principled reasons for restricting Strategic Reliabilism

to normal worlds. Still, some might be disappointed. After all, Strategic

Reliabilism does not even hold out the hope of solving the problem of

skepticism. Is this a reason to have doubts about our theory? Perhaps.

Who wouldn’t prefer a lovely theory that both guided reason and solved

the problem of skepticism? For those who might be disappointed, however,

it’s important to recognize two points. First, there might be no

unified epistemological theory that meets all our goals. We suggest that

Strategic Reliabilism reflects the fact that you can’t always get what you

want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Second, even if the failure of Strategic Reliabilism to address the skeptical

challenge is a mark against it, that is not by itself a mark in favor of any

other approach. In particular, it is not a reason to believe that the standard

analytic approach to epistemology can yield a satisfying solution to the

skeptical problem.

Strategic Reliabilism recognizes that for most people dealing with everyday

issues, skepticism is not a significant problem. This is a point contextualists

make in defense of their account of justification (e.g., DeRose

1995). Our point is about what problems the excellent reasoner will tackle

and what problems she will ignore. At the risk of undermining our own

‘‘live and let live’’ response to the problem of skepticism, we should note

that as children of the 60s, we are nothing if not reflexive: our theory of

reasoning excellence applies to us as epistemologists as well. The philosopher

who takes skepticism seriously has made judgments, perhaps implicit, about what problems are important in epistemology. If naturalists

have not been sufficiently sensitive to the problems posed by the skeptical

challenge and other concerns of SAE, perhaps it is because we recognize

that there is a need for a genuinely prescriptive epistemological theory—

one that provides a framework for improving the reasoning of individuals

and institutions about significant issues. It’s not that skepticism and

other concerns of SAE are insignificant. But Standard Analytic Epistemology

so often ignores so much of the world that we do not believe

that the values implicit in its practice accurately reflect the values of its

proponents.

If improving the world is so important to you, why don’t you give up epistemology

and devote your lives to charity?

Our account of significance does not depend on a kind of maximizing

consequentialism. Significance ultimately is based on the conditions that

promote human flourishing, and given our physical and psychological

makeup, we take those conditions to be variable but also constrained. So

we would deny that people’s reasoning or action must always aim to

maximize some notion of the good.

On what grounds, then, can you criticize proponents of SAE for focusing

attention on skepticism? Let’s grant for the sake of argument that skepticism is

not the most significant problem facing epistemology. You admit that people

can be excellent reasoners even if they do not always address the most significant

problems. So your criticism of proponents of SAE depends on holding

them to standards you admit are unnecessarily high.

This objection fails to understand the nature of our criticism. We are

critical of epistemology as a field of study in the English-speaking world.

We are critical of the way resources (everything from human talent to

institutional support) are distributed in epistemology. We are happy to

grant that a healthy intellectual discipline can and should afford room for

people to pursue highly theoretical issues that don’t have any obvious

practical implications. So we do not object to any particular epistemologist

tackling the skeptical challenge. We object to the fact that proponents

of SAE insist (rightly) that epistemology has a prescriptive reason-guiding

function, while precious few resources are devoted to developing an

epistemological theory with useful prescriptive, reason-guiding advice.

Any epistemological theory worthy of the name must address the skeptical

challenge. The skeptic begins with a fund of presumptively justified beliefs and

proceeds to argue that one can’t legitimately make inferences that go beyond

that evidence. For example, a skeptic about the material world argues that on

the basis of our sensory beliefs, we can equally well support the brain-in-thevat

hypothesis, the ideational world hypothesis, the evil demon hypothesis, the

material world hypothesis, etc. All of these hypotheses are underdetermined by

the evidence. The skeptical challenge is that since the evidence does not

support any one of these hypotheses over any other, we cannot justifiably

believe any of them.

A central problem with naturalistic approaches to epistemology, including

the one defended in this book, is that they fail to address the skeptical

challenge. Naturalists begin their epistemological investigations by making

substantive assumptions that skeptics are unwilling to grant: that there is a

material world, that there are other minds, etc. You face a dilemma. Either

you ignore the skeptical challenge, in which case your theory does not deserve

to be called an epistemological theory, or you beg the question against the

skeptic.

Let’s begin with a ‘‘live and let live’’ response to the skeptical problem.

Our approach to epistemology does not provide a solution to skepticism.

But what do we really want from an epistemological theory? It would

certainly be nice to have a theory that solved the problem of skepticism.

But it would also be nice to have a theory that provided useful guidance to

reasoners. An epistemological theory that provided a framework for how

to reason in an excellent manner could have many practical benefits. It

could provide a framework for thinking about diagnosis that led to better

medical outcomes, a framework for thinking about parole board decisions

that led to a less violent society, a framework for thinking about public

policy that helped the electorate support policies that better serve its

values, and so on. Now, one might legitimately wonder whether a useful

reason-guiding theory is possible; but one might equally well wonder

whether a theory that solves the problem of skepticism is possible. Our

point is that if philosophers insist that a theory of reasoning excellence

that has this ameliorative aim is not epistemology, well then, so much the

worse for epistemology.

The ‘‘live and let live’’ response notes that many successful theories

don’t do everything we might like them to do. Newton’s theory of motion was highly successful even though it does not explain all physical phenomena

(e.g., electromagnetic phenomena). So a theory of reasoning excellence

might be highly successful at providing useful guidance to

reasoners even though it does not solve some other epistemological

problems. In particular, it might well not solve the skeptical problem. So

we admit that we don’t have a solution to the skeptical challenge, but

we’re proposing a theory that aims to meet a different goal. Unless one

rejects this as a legitimate goal of epistemology, then the skeptic’s criticism

fails to uncover a problem with any theory, naturalistic or not, that has

this goal. And of course that includes Strategic Reliabilism.

The ‘‘live and let live’’ response is problematic for any naturalistic theory, like

yours, that takes reasoning excellence to be partly determined by the reliability

of reasoning strategies. You argue that according to Strategic Reliabilism,

one ought to use Goldberg’s Rule in making tentative diagnoses of

psychiatric patients on the basis of the MMPI. That’s because Goldberg’s Rule

has low costs and is reliable on problems that are significant. But the skeptic

can reformulate her challenge so that it is about reasoning excellence. If a

skeptical hypothesis is true, if, for example, there are no other minds or other

people, then Goldberg’s Rule would not be reliable after all. Given this possibility,

how could we ever know how to reason in an excellent fashion? The

problem with the ‘‘live and let live’’ response is that it fails to recognize that

the skeptical problem is so pervasive that it cannot be sidestepped or avoided.

In the face of this challenge, our inclination is to restrict our theory to

normal worlds—that is, non-skeptical worlds that are presumed to be like

our own (Goldman 1986, 107–9). A reasoning strategy is reliable when it

has a high truth ratio on the assumption that the world is as we presume it

to be, i.e., nonskeptical.

But the move to ‘‘normal worlds’’ is cheating. You escape the skeptical

challenge simply by ruling by fiat that the skeptical hypotheses are false. Is

there some principled reason that warrants the move to ‘‘normal worlds’’? Or

is this move simply motivated by the understandable but unprincipled desire

to avoid a difficult problem?

Technically, we are not ruling that the skeptical hypotheses are false. Our

point is that judgments of reasoning excellence are insensitive to whether

or not a skeptical hypothesis is true. There are two principled reasons for

this move to normal, non-skeptical worlds. First, the goal of Strategic Reliabilism is not to solve the problem of skepticism. It aims to be a useful

reason-guiding theory. This is a legitimate goal of epistemology. Strategic

Reliabilism should be assessed in terms of whether it meets this goal. If it

does, then the fact that it does not meet a different goal (solving the skeptical

problem) does not by itself give us a reason to doubt it. Rather, it

suggests that the epistemological theory that guides reasoning is not the

theory that will solve the problem of skepticism. Second, recall that Strategic

Reliabilism is supposed to articulate the normative principles that

guide the prescriptions of Ameliorative Psychology. A cursory examination

of Ameliorative Psychology makes evident that it ignores the skeptical

challenge; for example, it employs the processes and categories of contemporary

psychology. So given that our aim is to articulate the normative

presuppositions of Ameliorative Psychology, it is perfectly reasonable for

our theory to ignore the possibility of skepticism if the sciences does. And

the science does.

There are good, principled reasons for restricting Strategic Reliabilism

to normal worlds. Still, some might be disappointed. After all, Strategic

Reliabilism does not even hold out the hope of solving the problem of

skepticism. Is this a reason to have doubts about our theory? Perhaps.

Who wouldn’t prefer a lovely theory that both guided reason and solved

the problem of skepticism? For those who might be disappointed, however,

it’s important to recognize two points. First, there might be no

unified epistemological theory that meets all our goals. We suggest that

Strategic Reliabilism reflects the fact that you can’t always get what you

want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Second, even if the failure of Strategic Reliabilism to address the skeptical

challenge is a mark against it, that is not by itself a mark in favor of any

other approach. In particular, it is not a reason to believe that the standard

analytic approach to epistemology can yield a satisfying solution to the

skeptical problem.

Strategic Reliabilism recognizes that for most people dealing with everyday

issues, skepticism is not a significant problem. This is a point contextualists

make in defense of their account of justification (e.g., DeRose

1995). Our point is about what problems the excellent reasoner will tackle

and what problems she will ignore. At the risk of undermining our own

‘‘live and let live’’ response to the problem of skepticism, we should note

that as children of the 60s, we are nothing if not reflexive: our theory of

reasoning excellence applies to us as epistemologists as well. The philosopher

who takes skepticism seriously has made judgments, perhaps implicit, about what problems are important in epistemology. If naturalists

have not been sufficiently sensitive to the problems posed by the skeptical

challenge and other concerns of SAE, perhaps it is because we recognize

that there is a need for a genuinely prescriptive epistemological theory—

one that provides a framework for improving the reasoning of individuals

and institutions about significant issues. It’s not that skepticism and

other concerns of SAE are insignificant. But Standard Analytic Epistemology

so often ignores so much of the world that we do not believe

that the values implicit in its practice accurately reflect the values of its

proponents.

If improving the world is so important to you, why don’t you give up epistemology

and devote your lives to charity?

Our account of significance does not depend on a kind of maximizing

consequentialism. Significance ultimately is based on the conditions that

promote human flourishing, and given our physical and psychological

makeup, we take those conditions to be variable but also constrained. So

we would deny that people’s reasoning or action must always aim to

maximize some notion of the good.

On what grounds, then, can you criticize proponents of SAE for focusing

attention on skepticism? Let’s grant for the sake of argument that skepticism is

not the most significant problem facing epistemology. You admit that people

can be excellent reasoners even if they do not always address the most significant

problems. So your criticism of proponents of SAE depends on holding

them to standards you admit are unnecessarily high.

This objection fails to understand the nature of our criticism. We are

critical of epistemology as a field of study in the English-speaking world.

We are critical of the way resources (everything from human talent to

institutional support) are distributed in epistemology. We are happy to

grant that a healthy intellectual discipline can and should afford room for

people to pursue highly theoretical issues that don’t have any obvious

practical implications. So we do not object to any particular epistemologist

tackling the skeptical challenge. We object to the fact that proponents

of SAE insist (rightly) that epistemology has a prescriptive reason-guiding

function, while precious few resources are devoted to developing an

epistemological theory with useful prescriptive, reason-guiding advice.