Abstract

Considers the popular doctrine of reliabilism, the thesis that distinguishing between internal and external guarantees of reliability dissolves Hume's problem, since there may well be an external guarantee, in the way the world actually is, of the reliability of standard inductive practice. Indeed, we have good evidence that the world is so constituted to favour these practices. Furthermore, regarding the past predictive success of inductive inferences as good evidence of the reliability of the procedure of inductive inference itself is no less circular than using deductive arguments to justify deductive inference. These claims are examined and rejected.