Reliabilist and Virtue Responses to Gettier

Reliabilist and virtue-theoretic responses recast the missing fourth condition in terms of the believer's cognitive faculties: knowledge is true belief produced by a reliable process, or true belief that succeeds through the exercise of intellectual virtue rather than luck.

Definition

Reliabilist responses hold that a justified true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliable, truth-conducive cognitive process; virtue responses hold that it counts as knowledge only if its truth is creditable to the exercise of the believer's intellectual competence or virtue.

Scope

This topic covers process reliabilism's treatment of Gettier cases, the diagnosis of those cases as failures of reliable connection, and virtue epistemology's account of knowledge as apt belief — belief true because competent. It includes the generality problem for reliabilism and the question of whether virtue conditions fully exclude environmental luck, as in fake-barn cases. Modal and defeasibility responses appear as neighbouring strategies.

Core questions

• Can the Gettier-defeating condition be located in the reliability of the belief's source?
• What makes a belief's truth creditable to the believer's competence rather than to luck?
• How should the relevant process be individuated — the generality problem?
• Do virtue conditions exclude environmental luck of the fake-barn kind?

Key theories

Process reliabilism

Building on his causal theory, Goldman holds that knowledge is true belief formed by a reliable process; Gettier cases fail because the process linking belief to truth is, in the relevant sense, not reliable.

Virtue epistemology (apt belief)

Sosa and Zagzebski analyse knowledge as cognitive success attributable to the exercise of intellectual virtue or competence, so that a belief Gettiered by luck is accurate but not adroitly apt and hence not knowledge.

History

Goldman's causal theory of 1967 and process reliabilism of 1979 reframed the Gettier problem as a question about reliable connection rather than evidence. Sosa's faculty-based virtue perspective, developed from 1980 onward, and Zagzebski's character-based virtue epistemology in 1996 added the idea that knowledge requires creditable success, an approach that has become a leading framework for handling Gettier cases.

Debates

The generality problem and environmental luck

Reliabilism must specify how broadly or narrowly to describe the belief-forming process whose reliability matters, on pain of arbitrary verdicts; virtue accounts must explain why fake-barn beliefs, though competently formed, still seem not to be knowledge, leaving open whether either fully captures the Gettier-defeating factor.

Key figures

• Alvin Goldman
• Ernest Sosa
• Linda Zagzebski

Seminal works

• goldman1967
• zagzebski1996

Frequently asked questions

How does reliabilism handle Gettier cases?

Reliabilism says knowledge is true belief produced by a reliable process. In Gettier cases the belief's truth does not flow from a reliable connection to the fact but from luck, so the reliability condition is not met in the relevant way and the belief fails to be knowledge.

What does it mean to call knowledge 'apt belief'?

In virtue epistemology, a belief is apt when it is true because of the believer's competence, much as an archer's shot is apt when it hits because of skill rather than a lucky gust. Gettiered beliefs are accurate but not apt, since their truth is owed to luck rather than competence.