This chapter argues that by attending to the illocutionary force of knowledge attributions — specifically, that they serve to give credit to the believer for getting things right — fallibilists can assuage two problems plaguing their concept of knowledge: namely, the lottery problem and the Gettier problem. Borrowing work from Joel Fienberg on blaming, an account of credit attribution is developed that stresses the relationship between causal salience and causal responsibility. Because causal salience is context sensitive, resolutions to the lottery problem and the Gettier problem contain a significant contextual element. Just as an agent must be causally responsible in order to receive credit for athletic feats, so too must an agent's cognitive character or intellectual virtue be a necessary element to explain why an agent is deserving of credit for obtaining a true belief. This account is tested against cases relative to the above problems and ends with how this account can explain the value of knowledge.

Section 1 articulates a genus‐species claim: that knowledge is a kind of success from ability. Equivalently: In cases of knowledge, S’s success in believing the truth is attributable to S’s ability. That idea is then applied to questions about the nature and value of knowledge. Section 2 asks what it would take to turn the genus‐species claim into a proper theory of knowledge; that is, into informative, necessary and sufficient conditions. That question is raised in the context of an important line of objection against even the genus‐species claim; namely, that there is no way to understand the attribution relation so that it does all the work that it is supposed to do. Section 3 reviews several extant proposals for understanding the attribution relation, and argues that none of them are adequate for answering the objection. Section 4 proposes a different way of understanding the relation, and shows how the resulting view does resolve the objection. Section 5 completes the new account by proposing a way to understand intellectual abilities. Section 6 briefly addresses Barn Façade cases and lottery propositions. Section 7 briefly addresses a question about the scope of knowledge; in particular, it shows how the new view allows a neo‐Moorean response to skepticism.

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In this paper I will argue for a position I call "agent reliabilism". My strategy for doing this will be in two parts. In Part One of the paper I review two skeptical arguments from Hume, and I argue that they require us to adopt some form of reliabilism. The main idea is this: Hume's arguments show that there is no logical or quasi-logical relation between our empirical beliefs and their evidence. Put another way, the arguments show that if our evidence is indeed a reliable indication of the truth of our empirical beliefs, then this is at most a contingent fact about human cognition, rather than a function of any necessary relations, deductive or inductive, between evidence and belief. Therefore, in order to avoid skepticism about empirical knowledge, we must adopt an epistemology that allows empirical knowledge to be based on evidence that is merely contingently reliable. In other words, we must adopt some form of reliabilism.In Part Two of the paper I argue that agent reliabilism solves two widely recognized problems for simple reliabilism, or the position that knowledge is true belief grounded in reliable cognitive processes. The first is "The Problem of Strange and Fleeting Processes." There are a number of counter-examples which show that simple reliabilism is too weak, since not all reliable processes give rise to knowledge. Namely, strange and fleeting ones do not. For this reason reliabilism must somehow restrict the kinds of process that are relevant for generating knowledge. The second problem for simple reliabilism is the persistent intuition that knowledge requires subjective justification. One way that this problem has been pressed against reliabilism is in the demand that knowers be somehow sensitive to the reliability of their evidence. It is not enough, the objection goes, that one's beliefs are in fact based on reliable grounds. Rather, one must be, in some relevant sense, aware that this is so. I will argue that agent reliabilism has resources for addressing both these problems.If the argument of Part One is correct, then to avoid skepticism we have to be reliabilists. If the argument of Part Two is correct, then we have to be agent reliabilists. That position would therefore describe a general framework for any adequate theory of knowledge. In the course of the discussion it will also

Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein-it more recently circled round into renewed proximity to them with the later Wittgenstein' (GPL, p. 277). The final chapter, 'Hermeneutics', surveys the history of hermeneutics from Ernesti to the present. Forster regards this as in large part a history of decline, culminating in Gadamer's Heidegger-derived belief that we should not aspire to recapture the original meaning of a text but should rather assimilate it to our own interests and outlook. The decline is relieved, however, by the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud) and also by J. L. Austin's and Quentin Skinner's accounts of the role played by illocutionary force in texts and discourse, a 'vindication of Herder's basic intuition that linguistic interpretation needs to be complemented with psychological interpretation' (pp. 314-15). Forster concludes by suggesting two areas for further exploration. The first is the part played in the articulation of a text by its 'metalinguistic component', the authors' own conceptions of meaning, synonymy, etc., which 'vary significantly from period to period, culture to culture, and perhaps even individual to individual' (p. 317). The second is language-use in animals and animals' capacities for classifying perceptions and recognising prey and predators. Forster avoids a looming conflict with Herder by qualifying some of their 'meaning', 'thoughts' and 'concepts' as merely 'proto-meaning', etc., when he recommends the extension of hermeneutics to the interpretation not only of their language but also of their other behaviour. Forster amply fulfils his two aims. He explores a rich and interesting vein in the history of philosophy. Equipped with massive erudition and a sharp eye for logical distinctions, he presents its achievements in a detailed, but systematic and digestible, form. His defence of the doctrines he unearths is invariably tenacious and for the most part compelling. These books are a model both of scrupulous interpretation and of precise and rigorous argument.