A New Statistical Solution to the Generality Problem

Abstract

The Generality Problem is widely recognized to be a serious problem for reliabilist theories of justification. James R. Beebe's Statistical Solution is one of only a handful of attempted solutions that has garnered serious attention in the literature. In their recent response to Beebe, Julien Dutant and Erik J. Olsson successfully refute Beebe's Statistical Solution. This paper presents a New Statistical Solution that countenances Dutant and Olsson's objections, dodges the serious problems that trouble rival solutions, and retains the theoretical virtues that made Beebe's solution so attractive in the first place. There indeed exists a principled, rigorous, conceptually sparse, and plausible solution to the Generality Problem: it is the New Statistical Solution.

Dual processes, dual virtues

“…96–97) and seen different specifications by Alston ( 1995 , pp. 12–13), Beebe ( 2004 ) and Kampa ( 2018 ), as well as by Lyons ( 2019 ).…”

How Racial Injustice Undermines News Sources and News-Based Inferences

“…Someone could also object that Goldberg's account of coverage-supported inference justification faces a variant of the generality problem. The generality problem is a problem that at least reliabilist theories of justification face (Bishop, 2010;Goldman, 1979;Kampa, 2018;Lyons, 2019). This problem is that reliabilist theories of justification do not offer any principled way to determine which process type is causally relevant when assessing whether a particular belief is reliably formed.…”

A Dynamical Perspective on the Generality Problem

“…(Conee and Feldman 1998, pp. 2-3) As many authors have pointed out (Goldman 1986;Adler and Levin 2002;Comesaña 2006;Olsson 2016;Kampa 2018), the generality problem is not a problem just for process reliabilism but for many other epistemological theories facing similar issues. Thus, whether or not an epistemological theory is affected by the generality problem, or a similar difficulty, is unlikely to be an interesting concern when deciding among epistemological rivals.…”