Not one of us can deny the proposition that our minds are reliable (Call this “The Reliability Principle”). To do so would lead to self-contradiction (if your mind isn’t reliable, how can you trust your belief that it isn’t?). Of course, that doesn’t make the proposition true, but it does mean that we all have no choice but to assume that it is. Keep reading, I’m going to develop this into something really interesting.
What strikes me is that if we build a theory of knowledge with this principle as a corner stone, a lot of hard problems are dissolved. For instance, beliefs in the general reliability of your memory, that you are not dreaming right now (if your mind is reliable and it makes a distinction between what goes on in your head and what doesn’t, then that distinction is likely true, hence you are not a brain in the vat of a mad scientist), that your basic instincts are correct (including our unavoidable belief in inductive reasoning), are all justified with the Reliability Principle. I’m hesistant to abandon strong foundationalism (which limits what we ought to believe to only things which are self-evident or are derived from that which is self-evident) but several very difficult problems like the ones I mentioned (with the exception of induction) make this epistemology an attractive solution.
