Abstract

Reliabilism is the dominant theory in contemporary analytic epistemology. This chapter reviews some considerations which throw doubt on the widely accepted thesis or R‐NEC that reliability is necessary for knowledge. It considers whether the generally pessimistic results in the experimental literature from social psychology concerning subjects’ ability in a test situation to tell, from behavioral cues, whether a speaker is lying, present a severe challenge for R‐NEC. The chapter develops a more classic line of thought invoking intuitions about cases which suggests that there is, however, cause from another source to put in question R‐NEC, at least in the case of testimonial knowledge. It elucidates some threads from what has emerged so far, to show how testimony reveals the need for a new kind of analysis, illustrating the need and scope for social epistemology. The chapter proposes Approved‐List Reliabilism as a new general theory of knowledge which incorporates reliabilist intuitions, but at a different point.