Philosophical Issues, 14, Epistemology, 2004

DOES RELIABILISM MAKE KNOWLEDGE MERELY

CONDITIONAL?1

Hilary Kornblith
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Reliabilism is the view that knowledge is reliably produced true belief.

It is a form of externalism. According to the reliabilist, it is the fact that a
true belief is reliably produced which makes it a case of knowledge; this fact
need not be known, or believed, or epistemically accessible to the knower.
Thus, on this view, if Andrew is looking at a table in standard conditions
and comes to believe that there is a table in front of him, then, so long as
this belief is reliably produced, it is a case of knowledge. Andrew neednt
know that his belief is reliably produced; the question of the reliability of the
belief acquisition process need never have crossed Andrews mind. The fact
which makes Andrews belief a case of knowledge may be, in a word, external
to Andrews epistemic perspective.
But how, one might wonder, could such facts external to Andrews
epistemic perspective turn his true beliefs into knowledge? If Andrew
doesnt know that his belief about the table is reliably produced, if he
doesnt even have any reason to believe that it is reliably produced, then
surely the fact that his belief is reliably produced is epistemically impotent: it
cant do the work of turning his true belief into knowledge because it cannot
do any epistemic work at all. Or so it has seemed to many philosophers.
Thus, Laurence BonJour presents the following problem for reliabilism:
If, for example, an epistemologist claims that a certain belief or set of beliefs,
whether his own or someone elses, has been arrived at in a reliable way, but
says this on the basis of cognitive processes of his or her own whose reliability is
merely for him or her merely an external fact to which he or she has no firstperson access, then the proper conclusion is merely that the belief or beliefs
originally in question are reliably arrived at (and perhaps thereby are justified or
constitute knowledge in externalist senses) if the epistemologists own cognitive
processes are reliable in the way that he or she believes them to be . . . But the

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only apparent way to arrive at a result that is not ultimately hypothetical in this
way is for the reliability of at least some processes to be establishable on the
basis of what the epistemologist can know directly or immediately from his or
her own first-person perspective.2

Reliabilism, according to this criticism, makes knowledge merely hypothetical or conditional: we have knowledge if we have a belief which is reliably
produced. But the antecedent of this conditional, according to BonJour,
cannot be discharged. Externalism is thereby revealed as a very powerful
and commonsensically unpalatable version of skepticism . . . 3
BonJour is not alone in making this kind of argument. A similar point
is developed by Barry Stroud. Stroud considers the status of the externalists
avowed belief in externalism itself.
The scientific externalist claims to have good reason to believe that his theory
is true. It must be granted that if, in arriving at his theory, he did fulfill the
conditions his theory says are sufficient for knowing things about the world,
then if that theory is correct, he does in fact know that it is. But still, I want to
say, he himself has no reason to think that he does have good reason to think
that his theory is correct. He is at best in the position of someone who has good
reason to believe his theory if that theory is in fact true, but has no such reason
to believe it if some other theory is true instead. He can see what he would have
good reason to believe if the theory he believes were true, but he cannot see or
understand himself as knowing or having good reason to believe what his theory
says.4

The externalist cannot legitimately claim to know that his theory of knowledge is true; his avowed knowledge of his own theory is merely conditional.
Moreover, what is true of the externalists avowed belief in externalism itself
is also true of his avowed beliefs about the physical world. The externalist
may not legitimately claim to have any knowledge at all; all such claims are
merely conditional.
If BonJour and Stroud are right, then one point long thought to count
in favor of externalism is fully undercut. Historically, internalism has consistently been faced with skeptical problems. Internalist foundationalists
have had tremendous difficulties showing how beliefs about the physical
world might meet their stringent standards for justification. Internalist
coherentists have found themselves in a similar bind. Internalism seems to
lead, both inexorably and quickly, to a radical skepticism. Externalism,
whatever its other problems, seemed to be clearly superior in this respect.
Thus, consider reliabilism. While internalism leads to the result that knowledge of the physical world is impossible, reliabilism tells us that we have
knowledge of the physical world if we have true beliefs about it which are
reliably produced. Such a condition is not impossible to meet. There are,
beyond doubt, possible worlds in which creatures form true beliefs about

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their environments by way of reliable cognitive mechanisms. So reliabilism

seems to make knowledge possible while internalism makes it impossible.
More than this, reliabilism seems to do far more than make knowledge
possible. Surely our world is a world containing creatures many of whose
beliefs are both true and reliably produced, and surely we are among those
creatures. So reliabilism explains not only how knowledge is possible, but
how it is that we have a great deal of knowledge. This seems to be a
significant advantage of externalism over internalism.
BonJour and Stroud seek to undermine this advantage, for if they are
right, reliabilists may make no legitimate claims to knowledge at all. As
Stroud remarks, this issue is tied to the very sources of the epistemological
quest.5 In this paper, I argue that BonJour and Stroud are mistaken.
Reliabilism does not make knowledge merely conditional, nor does it
force us to make knowledge claims which are merely conditional. Instead,
reliabilism properly explains the phenomenon of human knowledge and,
indeed, of knowledge in general.

I
The issues involved in this debate are complex, and they involve not
only questions about the nature of knowledge (and justified belief as well),
but also questions about the relationship between knowing and knowing
that one knows (as well as questions about the relationship between being
justified and being justified in believing that one is justified). In order to pin
these issues down, it will be especially useful to begin with some examples.
Consider Jack. Jack is a know-it-all. In saying this, I dont mean, of
course, that Jack is omniscient. Rather, Jack is someone who claims, and
sincerely believes, that he has an extraordinarily wide range of knowledge.
Whenever an issue arises as to whether some proposition p is true, whether
p concerns abstruse matters of geography, history, politics or quantum
mechanics, Jack not only has opinions as to whether p is true, but he
sincerely claims, and with great confidence, to know whether p is true.
Jack is quite bright and quite knowledgeable, though not nearly so bright
or knowledgeable as he takes himself to be. Many of the claims Jack makes
are false, and some are downright absurd. Others sometimes try to correct
Jack in his mistaken claims, but they have little effect. Jack is utterly selfconfident, both in his claims about various abstruse matters and in his
claims to know about these matters.
Mary, on the other hand, has an intellectual temperament altogether
different from Jacks. Mary is at least as bright, and at least as knowledgeable, as Jack, but she is not given to the wild claims and overconfidence
which typify Jack. Instead, Mary is quite circumspect. When a question
arises as to whether some proposition p is true, more often than not, Mary

188 Hilary Kornblith

will sincerely claim that she doesnt know, although her friends sometimes
suspect that she does. At the same time, Mary does not disclaim all knowledge. There are certain areas, and certain sorts of questions, about which
Mary is quite confident, and if she is asked about these, she will answer
forthrightly and she will say that these are things about which she does
indeed know.
What should the reliabilist say about Jack and Mary? When it comes to
Jack, the reliabilist will allow that there are many things that Jack knows,
though not nearly as many as he takes himself to know. This is in part
because many of the things Jack claims to know are false, and so on any
account of knowledge Jack doesnt know those things; but it is not only for
this reason. Many of Jacks beliefs are formed in utterly unreliable ways.
Whatever subject might be under discussion, Jack has an opinion on it, and
these opinions seem to pop into Jacks head out of nowhere, although this is
not how it seems to Jack. I will simply stipulate, for purposes of discussion,
that the mental mechanism at work in Jack which produces the majority of
his beliefs is unreliable, and so, on the reliabilist view, the beliefs which
result from this mechanism, even when true, do not constitute knowledge.
At the same time, this is not the only mechanism responsible for Jacks
beliefs. In standard perceptual circumstances, Jacks beliefs are formed in
much the same ways as yours and mine are, and I will suppose that these
perceptual mechanisms are extremely reliable. Jack has a good deal of
perceptual knowledge.
What, according to the reliabilist, does Jack know that he knows? This
depends, of course, on the reliability of the mechanisms by which Jacks
beliefs that he knows are produced. For most individuals, there are probably many such mechanisms, but in Jacks case I want to make a simplifying
assumption. Let us suppose that whenever the issue arises as to whether
Jack knows something, whether that issue is raised by someone else or by
Jack himself, Jack comes to believe that he does in fact know. This mechanism produces far more false beliefs than truths, precisely because Jack
forms beliefs on such an extraordinarily wide range of topics and in such
a haphazard way. The one mechanism by which Jacks beliefs about what he
knows are formed is thus unreliable, and the reliabilist must thus say that
Jack does not know that he knows anything. Although Jack has a good deal
of first-order knowledge, he has no second-order knowledge.
The reliabilist will rightly see Mary as quite different in this respect. She
has a good deal of first-order knowledge, since many of her beliefs about the
world are reliably produced, but she has a good deal of second-order
knowledge as well, for the mechanisms which produce her beliefs that she
has knowledge are themselves reliable as well. For the reliabilist, Mary need
not be in a position to cite reasons for her beliefs; the reasons she has need
not be cognitively accessible to her. Mary may simply say, quietly yet
confidently, that this is something which she knows, when asked about

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some particular issue, and if her belief that she knows is reliably arrived at,
and if it is also true, the reliabilist will say that Mary knows that she knows.
What the reliabilist says about Mary and Jack is not, I believe, altogether
unreasonable.
The internalist, on the other hand, sees reliably formed true belief as
neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Knowledge requires justification, according to the internalist, and justification requires reasons available within a first-person epistemic perspective, as BonJour puts it.6 The
reliabilist sees the formation of beliefs on the basis of such reasons7 as one
kind of reliable process among many: reliability is just a matter of attunement to the facts, and such attunement may involve reasons available from
the first-person perspective or not. But since the internalist insists that there
is no knowledge without reasons available from the first-person perspective,
the internalist will have to insist that Mary, like Jack, is wholly lacking in
second-order knowledge if the attunement she has to her first-order knowledge is not achieved by way of resources available from the first-person
perspective. This is, I believe, quite counterintuitive.
Let us look at what is going on in this case in more detail. BonJour and
Stroud wish to argue that externalists are not entitled to make unconditional claims to knowledge. Now both Jack and Mary make unconditional
knowledge claims. Jack will insist that he knows such things as that Addis
Ababa is the capital of Burkina Fasso, and Mary will claim that she knows,
for example, that George Washington was born in 1732. We all agree that
Jack is not entitled to the knowledge claims he makes. What should we say
about Mary? Is she entitled to claim that she knows when George Washington was born, or must her claims to knowledge be qualified by some
conditional?
According to BonJour, externalists are entitled to make the conditional
claim that Mary knows when Washington was born if her belief was reliably
produced, but neither the externalist nor Mary is entitled to the unconditional claim that Mary knows when Washington was born. Reliabilism tells
us that whether Mary knows depends on the reliability of the process by
which Marys belief was produced. But Mary does not have first-person
access to the process which produced her belief about the year of Washingtons birth, nor does she have such access to the reliability of that process,
and so, BonJour concludes, the reliabilist must say that Mary is entitled to
nothing more than the claim that if her belief is reliably produced, then she
knows. And the same is true of the externalist himself, contemplating
Marys epistemic situation, unless the externalist has some way of establishing, from his own first-person perspective, that Marys belief was reliably
produced.
If this argument is an attempt to show that, by their own standards,
externalists are not entitled to make any unconditional knowledge claims
nor are they in a position to view others as entitled to make unconditional

190 Hilary Kornblith

knowledge claims, then the argument surely fails. According to reliabilism,

Mary knows that p if and only if her belief that p is both true and reliably
produced; Mary knows that she knows that p if and only if her belief that
she knows that p is both true and reliably produced. Nothing about the
first-person perspective is epistemically essential to knowledge, according to
the reliabilist.
As far as what Mary is entitled to claim, or what the externalist is
entitled to claim about Mary, similar considerations apply. I dont know
exactly what conditions are required for an individual to be entitled to make
a claim. Perhaps an individual is entitled to claim that p if and only if he or
she is justified in believing that p. Or perhaps more than this is required:
perhaps an individual is entitled to claim that p if and only if he or she
knows that p. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the stronger of
these two requirements gets things right. Then according to the reliabilist,
Mary will only be entitled to claim that p if she knows that p, that is, if her
belief that p is both true and reliably produced. And Mary will be entitled to
claim to know that p if and only if her belief that she knows that p is both
true and reliably produced. The reliabilist, of course, does not believe that
anything about Marys first-person epistemic perspective is relevant here,
and BonJours insistence that it is does not show a problem within the
externalist position; it only shows what we already knew, that externalists
will attribute knowledge in a variety of situations where internalist conditions are not met.
II
While BonJour does not pursue this argument further, Stroud anticipates exactly this reply. After arguing that externalists are not entitled to
claim to have knowledge unconditionally, but only subject to conditions,
Stroud remarks,
I am aware that describing what I see as the deficiency in this way is not really
satisfactory or conclusive. It encourages the externalist to re-apply his theory
of knowing or having good reason to believe at the next level up, and to claim
that he can understand himself [to know or] to have good reason to believe
. . . because [he knows that he knows or] he has good reason to believe that he
does have good reason to believe . . . That further belief . . . is arrived at in turn
by fulfilling what his theory says are the conditions [for knowing or] for reasonably believing something.8

The externalist will be encouraged to make this response, of course, because

externalism is not a theory about first-order knowledge only, holding that
internalist conditions must be met for higher-order knowledge; externalism is
a theory about propositional knowledge generally, whether the propositions

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concern tables and chairs, or knowledge about tables and chairs, or anything else. So this is not some ad hoc move on the part of the externalist to
dodge an unattractive consequence of the theory. The externalist is here
simply insisting that his theory be consistently applied across the board, and
that internalist conditions not be smuggled in when the subject of discussion
moves from knowing to knowing that one knows.
After acknowledging that the externalist is encouraged to make just this
response to his argument, Stroud comments,
It is difficult to say precisely what is inadequate about that kind of response,
especially in terms that would be acceptable to an externalist. Perhaps it is
best to say that the theorist has to see himself as [knowing or] having good
reason to believe his theory in some sense of [knowing or] having good
reason that cannot be fully captured by an externalist account.9

So Strouds objection, and perhaps BonJours as well, is not a problem

within externalism. The objection is not that when the externalist theory is
consistently applied to cases, it generates results about when individuals
know which are different from those advertised by externalists. Rather, the
suggestion is that there is some important sense of knowledge, or justified belief, or having a good reason, which externalism cannot capture.
And this suggestion, if true, would certainly still present a serious problem
for externalism.
Applying this understanding of the problem to the externalists belief in
his own theory, Stroud now formulates the problem in this way:
So even if it is true that you can know something without knowing that you
know it, the philosophical theorist of knowledge cannot simply insist on the
point and expect to find acceptance of an externalist account of knowledge
fully satisfactory. If he could, he would be in the position of someone who says:
I dont know whether I understand human knowledge or not. If what I believe
about it is true and my beliefs are produced in what my theory says is the right
way, I do know how human knowledge comes to be, so in that sense I do
understand. But if my beliefs are not true, or not arrived at in that way, I do
not. I wonder which it is. I wonder whether I understand human knowledge or
not. That is not a satisfactory position to arrive at in ones study of human
knowledgeor of anything else.10

Stroud is surely right that this is not a satisfactory position in which to find
oneself. But externalists are not in this position.
Let us return to cases. Once again, consider Mary. Mary does not have
internalist reasons for believing that Washington was born in 1732, nor does
she have internalist reasons for believing that she knows that Washington
was born in 1732. In spite of that, her belief about the year of Washingtons
birth is true and it was reliably produced, and the same, we may suppose, is

192 Hilary Kornblith

true of her belief that she knows the year of Washingtons birth. Mary
claims, with a quiet confidence, I know that Washington was born in
1732, and if she is challenged on this and asked to provide some justification for the claim, she will acknowledge that she is unable to do so. But this
will not diminish her confidence that she knows the year of Washingtons
birth. This is simply something I know, Mary will say. Looked at in
isolation, this attitude of Marys will look like hubris or dogmatism, but
those who know Mary will not see it that way. Mary does not often claim to
know things, and when she does, she is almost invariably right. Mary should
not be confused with Jack.
So Mary will not say, as Stroud seems to suggest she must, I dont
know whether I know the year of Washingtons birth. If what I believe
about it is true, and my belief about it is produced in the right sort of way,
then I do know when Washington was born. But if what I believe is false, or
if my belief was produced in an unreliable way, then I dont know. I wonder
which it is. Mary wont say any of this because she confidently believes
that Washington was born in 1732, and she confidently believes that she
knows that Washington was born in 1732. She does not wonder whether she
knows these things or not.
Now perhaps this is unfair to Stroud, and for two different reasons.
First, in the quoted passage, Stroud specifically discusses neither ordinary
individuals nor their garden variety beliefs, but the externalist epistemologists belief in his own theory of knowledge. So perhaps Marys belief about
Washington is not relevant. And second, Stroud focuses, in that passage, on
issues having to do with understanding, and not merely on questions about
knowledge. This complicates things considerably.
As far as Strouds focus on understanding goes, it is important to
recognize that the externalist and the reliabilist offer accounts of knowledge,
or, in some views, justified belief; they have nothing to say about understanding. I dont know exactly what understanding dogs, or chemistry, or
human knowledge comes to, but someone who has propositional knowledge
of, say, a handful of propositions about dogs, or chemistry, or human
knowledge probably doesnt count as understanding these things; it surely
takes more than that. I dont know whether understanding something can
be fully explained in terms of propositional knowledge, for example as
knowing a great many truths about that thing, or knowing the most important truths about it, or whether understanding something instead requires
more than just propositional knowledge.11 But if Strouds remarks are
meant to apply to understanding but not to propositional knowledge or
justification, then they are simply irrelevant to externalism and reliabilism,
and I very much doubt that Stroud intends his remarks to be taken in that
way.
So how does the situation of the externalist epistemologists belief in his
own theory differ from that of Marys belief that Washington was born in

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193

1732? We supposed that Mary was not in a position to cite any reasons for
her belief, and we supposed this in order to provide a clear case of an
individual who satisfies externalist conditions for knowledge without, at
the same time, satisfying internalist conditions for knowledge. A perfectly
parallel case would thus require an externalist epistemologist who claims to
know that externalism is true, and yet, at the same time, insists that he is in
no position to offer any reason whatever to believe that externalism is true.
Like Mary, he would have to say, This is simply something that I know.
There would, admittedly, be something very odd about such a case. Epistemologists tend to be fairly reflective individuals, and their beliefs, at least
about epistemological theories, tend to be formed only after a good deal of
self-conscious consideration. This self-conscious consideration typically
puts them in a position to offer a fairly elaborate set of reasons for their
epistemological views, and there is considerable professional pay-off in
being able to remember and articulate these reasons. An epistemologist
who could offer no reasons for his views at allsomeone who simply stated,
I know this to be truewould find himself at a considerable professional
disadvantage. These reasons alone make it hard to imagine an externalist
epistemologist whose belief about externalism is exactly parallel to Marys
belief about Washington. This is not to say that the externalist epistemologist will inevitably have good internalist reasons for believing externalism.
After all, there are substantial reasons for wondering whether anyone could
have good internalist reasons for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow,
or that the sun rose yesterday, or even that 2 2 4 or that there is a table
in front of me now, let alone for a philosophical theory.12 Nevertheless, it
must be granted that there are substantial impediments to constructing a
case involving an externalists belief in externalism which exactly parallels
Marys belief about Washington.
There is no reason, however, to think that the difficulty of constructing
such a parallel case tells us anything about human knowledge in general
rather than about epistemologists and the character of their professional
practice. Our externalist epistemologist may claim, with perfect consistency,
that knowledge does not require having good internalist reasons or arguments, while simultaneously allowing that he himself can present a good
many reasons and arguments in favor of that very view. Externalism, after
all, is not the absurd view that knowledge precludes being in a position to
offer reasons or present arguments. The externalist may go on to argue that
his own view accounts quite naturally for cases like Marys, involving individuals who have no internalist reasons for their beliefs, unlike internalism,
which must see Mary as epistemically on a par with Jack. The externalist
might even argue that internalist conditions on knowledge are rarely, if ever,
satisfied,13 and that internalists thereby fail to capture the very phenomenon
of human knowledge, or knowledge in general, which they seek to characterize. There would be no internal inconsistency in any of this.

194 Hilary Kornblith

And perhaps, in the end, we may construct cases in which epistemologists form beliefs about epistemological theories which do fully parallel the
case of Mary. There is, after all, the famous case, in mathematics, of
Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught Indian number theorist.14 As a
young man, Ramanujan wrote a long letter to the Oxford mathematician
G. H. Hardy, filled with page upon page of number theoretic claims, but
entirely devoid of proofs or even proof sketches. Hardy found that some of
the claims were well-known truths; some were mildly interesting extensions
of familiar results; and some were extremely interesting claims about which
Hardy could not tell, at least immediately, whether they were true or false.
Hardy spent a good deal of time working on these claims, and found that he
could prove many of them to be true, although, unsurprisingly, some of the
claims were mistaken. On the basis of this letter, Hardy arranged for
Ramanujan to go to Oxford, and a lengthy collaboration resulted. At
first, Hardy tried to teach Ramanujan how to construct a proof, but he
soon gave up. Although Hardy was a first-rate mathematician in his own
right, his partnership with Ramanujan saw him in a crucial but merely
supporting role: Ramanujan was a fount of important results, and Hardy,
as he modestly put it, provided the gas, that is, the proofs.
Reliabilists will say, not implausibly, that Ramanujan had a great deal
of mathematical knowledge, in spite of the fact that he could provide neither
proofs nor proof sketches for his results; he simply could not provide an
appropriate internalist justification for his claims. There is no doubt that
one could achieve a far greater degree of mathematical understanding by
reading the papers resulting from Ramanujans collaboration with Hardy
than by looking at nothing more than Ramanujans lists of mathematical
results. For this reason, the reliabilist will certainly want to allow that
Hardy was being overly modest in describing his own contribution as
gas. This does nothing, however, to undermine the claim that Ramanujan
had genuine mathematical knowledge. Hardys work is a source of additional knowledge, including knowledge of why Ramanujans results are
true. But it would surely be a mistake to insist that Hardys proofs account
for the difference between knowledge and true belief. Such a suggestion not
only undervalues Ramanujans cognitive achievements; it also overestimates
the importance of Hardys proofs.
It is surely tempting to say that Ramanujans claimseven if one knows
his track record, his ratio of true mathematical claims to false ones
provide one with nothing more than the likelihood that the given claim is
true, while Hardys proofs provide one with certainty. Even if certainty is
not required for knowledge, this shows that Hardys knowledge of these
claims is, at a minimum, superior to that of Ramanujans, if Ramanujans
cognitive achievements deserve the name of knowledge at all.
But this way of seeing things is surely mistaken. Ramanujans track
record was not perfect: he sometimes made mathematical claims which were

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195

false. But if Hardy was like any other human mathematician Ive ever
spoken with, his track record in producing proofs was not perfect either.
Hardy must surely have had occasions on which he took himself to have
proven a certain result, but later discovered that his would-be proof contained an error. So when Hardy produced what he took to be a proof of a
mathematical claim, this could not have been a source of certainty to Hardy
or to anyone else. Lengthy and complicated mathematical proofs may
contain errors which evade detection by even the greatest of mathematical
minds. When we acknowledge that Ramanujans track record in producing
true mathematical claims was less than perfect, we should add that Hardys
record in producing genuine mathematical proofs was almost certainly less
than perfect as well.
Indeed, for all we know, it could be that Ramanujans track record was
better than Hardys. We may imagine two mathematicians, R and H, this
time working independently of one another. R produces a series of claims
entirely devoid of proof; H produces a series of what he tells us are proofs.
The results which R and H produce overlap a good deal: R frequently
makes claims which H takes himself to have proven. But now let us suppose
that R is right 99% of the time, whereas H is only right 97% of the time.
One could take a hard line here and insist that neither R nor H have
mathematical knowledge since they both have imperfect track records, but
this line would commit one to the claim that human mathematicians are all
utterly lacking in mathematical knowledge since they have all made mistakes at one time or another. I wont explore this view further.
The reliabilist may claim that both R and H know a great many
mathematical claims to be true, and there are certain respects in which Rs
knowledge of these claims is superior, and others in which Hs knowledge is
superior: R is more likely to be right when he makes a claim, while H is
often in a position to explain why various claims are true, something R
cannot do. Depending on ones purposes, one may gain more either from
talking to R or to H, but they both have a great deal of knowledge.
The internalist, if he is not a complete skeptic, will need to claim that in
this case, H has a great deal of knowledge while R has none, in spite of the
fact that R is more reliable than H. This seems to me quite implausible.
I originally brought up the case of Hardy and Ramanujan because
Stroud claims that the externalist epistemologist is in an untenable position
if his knowledge of his own theory fails to satisfy internalist standards. But
what may plausibly be said of Hardy and Ramanujan may plausibly be said
of epistemologists as well. Imagine a self-taught philosopher, let us call him
Philo, who makes a long list off oracular pronouncements on philosophical
topics, none of which are provided with supporting argumentation. Let us
further suppose that many of these claims are widely agreed upon results in
the literature, although Philo has never read the relevant literature, and
some of these claims are interesting extensions of these results, extensions

196 Hilary Kornblith

which no one else had ever thought of. In addition, there are many claims
which go far beyond anything currently available in the literature. Philo
writes to a prominent philosopher, Discursis, who is, among other things,
particularly skilled in constructing arguments, and a collaboration results,
with Philo providing the results and Discursis providing the arguments,
arguments which are generally found to be utterly convincing by other
professional philosophers.
If Philo should one day offer an externalist account of knowledge, and
claim to know that his account is correct, he is guilty of no inconsistency nor
has he committed any intellectual impropriety. Philo, like Mary, and like
Ramanujan, may have a quiet confidence in his ideas. He may reasonably
say, I know this theory to be true. He would certainly not say, as Stroud
says he must,
I dont know whether I understand human knowledge or not. If what I believe
about it is true and my beliefs about it are produced in what my theory says is
the right way, I do know how human knowledge comes to be, so in that sense I
do understand. But if my beliefs are not true, or not arrived at in that way, I do
not. I wonder which it is. I wonder whether I do understand human knowledge
or not.

Philo does not wonder whether he understands human knowledge or not,

for he is confident that he does understand it, and he has every right to say
so. Philo may in the end turn out to be mistaken, for he is not infallible, but
in this respect, he differs from no one. Certainly internalists are not infallible
in their beliefs, and yet neither Stroud nor BonJour think that they are
prohibited from making unconditional knowledge claims.15 If what is
required for making legitimate knowledge claims is infallibility, then no
one may make them, and there is no special problem about externalism.
While Stroud and BonJour both argue that externalist knowledge
claims must be understood as merely conditional, BonJour focuses on the
fact that the reliability of the process by which a persons beliefs are
produced is external to that persons first-person epistemic perspective;
Stroud not only focuses on this, but also on the fact that the truth of a
persons belief is external to that persons epistemic perspective. Thus, in the
passage just quoted, Stroud insists that the externalist must say, If what I
believe . . . is true and my beliefs . . . are produced in . . . the right way, I do
know . . . But if my beliefs are not true, or not arrived at in that way, I do
not. [emphasis added] Stroud is right that the truth of a persons belief is
just as external to that persons first-person epistemic perspective as is the
reliability of the process which produced it. But in noting this, Stroud
undermines not only the point he is trying to make, but BonJours point
as well. After all, the truth of a persons belief is a necessary condition for
knowledge on all views, not just externalist accounts. Internalists too

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197

recognize that knowledge requires true belief. So if the mere fact that the
truth of a persons belief is external to their epistemic perspective thereby
requires that all knowledge claims be merely conditional, then the problem
which Stroud and BonJour have unearthed is not a problem about externalism at all; it is instead a problem for all views. There is no special
problem about externalism.
But surely the real conclusion we should all draw here is that there is no
problem about externalism because there is no problem here at all. Externalists as well as internalists may make unconditional knowledge claims
without fear of thereby coming into conflict with their own views.16 Neither
Stroud nor BonJour believe that knowledge requires infallibility, and so
long as it does not, fallible yet unconditional knowledge claims are perfectly
legitimate. Externalists need not qualify each of their knowledge claims with
the proviso if my belief is reliably produced any more than internalists
need to qualify their knowledge claims with the proviso if Im not mistaken. Reliabilism does not make knowledge merely conditional.

III
Thus far, we have been treating reliabilism, and externalism more
generally, as a theory of knowledge, but there is also a reliabilist, or
externalist, theory of justified belief, and BonJour and Stroud present
their objections not only against the former, but against the latter as well.
While they each argue, as we have seen, that reliabilism, or externalism,
makes knowledge merely conditional, they also argue that these views make
justified belief merely conditional. The point is also sometimes put in terms
of what the externalist has good reason to believe.17 So we will need to
consider whether this objection is any more effective against reliabilist or
externalist theories of justification than it proved to be against reliabilist or
externalist theories of knowledge.
Indeed, at least in the case of BonJour, there is reason to think that he
regards the objection to externalist theories of justification as the more
fundamental point. The concept of knowledge, BonJour tells us,
Though it provides a necessary starting point for epistemological reflection, is
much less ultimately important in relation to the main epistemological issues
than it has usually been thought to be . . . the main issues [in epistemology] will
be whether and how we have reasons or justification for our beliefs of various
kinds and just how strong such reasons or justification in fact turn out to be.18

Questions about knowledge, BonJour holds, fall very much into the background.19 So the important question, on this view, is not so much whether
externalists about knowledge may make unconditional knowledge claims,

198 Hilary Kornblith

but whether externalists about justified belief may make unconditional

claims to have justified beliefs.
There can be little doubt that the objection against externalist theories
looks far more plausible when it is couched as an objection against externalist theories of justification rather than an objection against externalist
theories of knowledge. As was just pointed out, everyone is an externalist
about knowledge to the following extent: because knowledge that p requires
the truth of p, and truth, at least in the typical case, is a fact external to the
individuals epistemic perspective, whether an individual in fact knows some
claim to be true will not typically be directly available from the individuals
first-person perspective. Justification, however, is different. Internalists hold
that the facts in virtue of which a belief is justified must be available from
the first-person perspective, while externalists deny this. So internalists will
hold that whether an individual is justified in his belief is something to
which he must have direct first-person access, unlike externalists. And this is
the basis of the suggestion that externalists, therefore, cannot make unconditional claims to have justified beliefs; they can only claim that their beliefs
are justified if they are reliably produced.
But once again, the objection fails. Externalists do not in any way fail to
meet their own standards; they merely fail to meet internalist standards.
And this does not show a problem with externalismthat they cannot make
unconditional claims to have justified beliefsunless there is an independent argument that externalism is an inadequate theory of justified belief.
There have, of course, been numerous arguments to that effect, but this is
not the place to examine them. The suggestion that externalism makes all
claims to have justified beliefs merely conditional was supposed to be an
independent argument against externalism, not one which piggybacked
upon some other, and independent, criticism.
The worry internalists have seems to come down to this: since externalists, by their own admission, do not have direct first-person access to the
justificatory status of their beliefs, it would, in every case, be sheer dogmatism for an externalist to claim that one of his or her beliefs is justified. Any
such claim to be justified, it might seem, would be an utter shot in the dark:
perhaps the belief is, as a matter of fact, reliably produced, and so, according to the externalist, fully justified, but so long as the individual has no
direct access to this fact from his first-person perspective, the individual is in
no position to claim that the belief is justified. All that can reasonably be
claimed, it seems, is that the belief is justified if it is reliably produced. If
externalists are to avoid the charge of dogmatism, then, it seems that they
will need to stop making unconditional claims to have justified beliefs.
But this objection is no more successful when directed against an
externalist theory of justified belief than it was when directed against an
externalist theory of knowledge. Mary, as we saw, is not dogmatic, and she
is entitled not only to claim that she knows when Washington was born; she

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199

is entitled to claim that she is justified in her belief about when he was born.
Her knowledge claims, and her claims to have justified beliefs, are not mere
shots in the dark, as her track record in making such claims amply shows.
She has a very good sense of when she knows, and when she is justified in
believing, and when she isnt. The internalist assumes that if one doesnt
have some sort of direct first-person access to the facts which determine
justifiedness, then one is in no position whatever to assess whether one is
justified. But Mary is well-calibrated; she doesnt just shoot from the hip.
Such calibration requires that ones judgments be regulated by the facts
which determine whether one is justified; it does not require that this
calibration be achieved in ways which are recognizable from the first-person
perspective.
IV
There is thus no good reason to think that reliabilism, or externalism in
general, make knowledge, or justified belief, merely conditional. Good
reasons to reject these views will need to come from some other quarter.
Notes
1. Thanks to Earl Conee for comments on a draft of this paper.
2. The Indispensability of Internalism, Philosophical Topics, 29(2001), 64.
BonJour presents this argument again in Epistemology: Classic Problems and
Contemporary Responses, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 2367.
3. Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 237.
4. Understanding Human Knowledge in General, reprinted in H. Kornblith, ed.,
Epistemology: Internalism and Externalism, Blackwell, 2001, 142. (This paper
originally appeared in 1989.)
5. Op. cit., 145.
6. For example in The Indispensability of Internalism, 64.
7. Assuming, of course, that proper sense can be made of the idea of the firstperson epistemic perspective.
8. Understanding Human Knowledge in General, 1423.
9. Ibid., 143.
10. Ibid., 143.
11. Catherine Elgin has useful and interesting things to say about these issues in
Considered Judgment, Princeton University Press, 1996.
12. Thus, even BonJour, who is as ardent a defender of internalism as one can get,
allows that memory beliefs cannot be justified on internalist grounds. (See
Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 184: But if I
am right that memory cannot in this way be treated as part of the foundation,
are we not then left after all with skepticism? In a way, I think we are.) And
when he acknowledges that his conditions on cognitive sanity require an

200 Hilary Kornblith

13.
14.

15.

16.

17.
18.
19.

externalist dimension (In Defense of Pure Reason, Cambridge University

Press, 1998, 128), he thereby commits himself to the view that internalists are
incapable of justifying any a priori claims. By his own account, this results in
radical skepticism, a kind of intellectual suicide (In Defense of Pure Reason,
5). For further discussion of this issue, see my Conditions on Cognitive Sanity
and the Death of Internalism, in R. Schantz, ed., The Externalist Challenge:
New Studies on Cognition and Intentionality, de Gruyter, forthcoming.
Indeed, some internalists are committed to this view. See note 12 above.
The story of Ramanujan and Hardy is told briefly by Hardy himself in A
Mathematicians Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1967, and, at greater
length, in Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius
Ramanujan, Scribners, 1991.
It is thus odd that BonJour should insist that externalist claims to knowledge are
merely hypothetical and insecure as long as they cannot be arrived at from the
resources available within a first-person epistemic perspective [The Indispensibility of Internalism, 64, and also Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 236; emphasis added], since internalist knowledge claims
are no more secure on BonJours view.
More precisely, the present argument shows no such problem, either for externalists or for internalists. As pointed out in note 12, there is reason to think that
internalists, or at least internalists such as BonJour, lay down standards for
justified belief which, on their own theory, they cannot meet. But this is a
different problem.
See passages quoted above.
Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 49.
Ibid., loc. cit.