Gea wrote:

http://geaannunziata.deviantart.com/

Goldman's virtue reliabilism

Belief -> Justified if the product of a reliable process (epistemic
virtue), where a "reliable process" has a high rate of producing
true beliefs and where "true" can be construed pragmatically

Belief -> Non-justified if not the product of a reliable process
(epistemic virtue)

Belief -> Unjustified if the product of an unreliable process
(epistemic vice)

There are some elements of these charts that I have not explained yet,
but I hope to do so through a discussion of very similar
counter-examples that may be given to both Dharmakyirti's and
Goldman's epistemologies.

Laurence BonJour offers several counter-examples to reliabilism. One of
these concerns a person named Norman who has a reliable clairvoyant
power. Let us call him "Psychic Norman." Through his clairvoyance,
Psychic Norman correctly believes that the President is in New York
City and he has no other evidence for or against this belief.
Furthermore, Psychic Norman's power has been and continues to be a
process that produces true beliefs, despite the fact that he has no
reasons for or against the possibility of clairvoyance. If reliabilism
is true, would not clairvoyance be a reliable process, at least for
Psychic Norman? Would clairvoyance become an epistemic virtue for
Psychic Norman, even if he has no other evidence to believe
clairvoyance is true? Is his belief justified?

Goldman admits that this counter-example is a tricky one for him.
However, he does suggest that Psychic Norman's belief is at least
non-justified, meaning it lacks justificational status as it is not the
product of an epistemic virtue in the real world. The belief may be
even unjustified due to possessing the epistemic vice of relying on a
class of processes including clairvoyance, ESP, telepathy, telekinesis,
etc., which have not been scientifically shown to be reliable
processes.

There is a major problem with this and similar counter-examples in that
they rely on applying the principle of reliabilism to various possible
worlds in which clairvoyance is reliable. However, science steps in
again to say that cognitive science tells us that most regular people
(i.e., non-philosophers) do not think in terms of fictional,
possible-world examples. In terms of Goldman's task of describing the
epistemic folkways of regular people, science-fiction examples are
simply not relevant; in terms of normative scientific epistemology, we
can provide good scientific evidence that such examples are not in fact
reliable in the real world. Therefore, while Psychic Norman may have a
justified belief in some possible world, the question is pointless
because we know he does not have a justified belief in the real world.

If the Psychic Norman counter-example were to work, one would have to
presuppose that clairvoyance is never a true means to knowledge, at
least in this world. It is not entirely clear that Dharmakyrti shares
this presupposition. In special cases, yogins and Buddhas are able to
have "yogic perception" (yogipratyakSa). While Dharmakyrti
concentrates on the extent to which yogic perception gives direct
access to the sixteen aspects of the Four Noble Truths, earlier
Buddhist texts claim that the Buddha and other accomplished
practitioners were capable of clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy,
etc. Although Dharmakyrti's views on yogic perception are nuanced and
complicated, it may be best to eschew the above counter-example on the
off-chance that Psychic Norman is a yogin and really does have direct
knowledge of the President's whereabouts.

Hence, I propose a different counter-example of a person named Ananda
who regularly achieves his goals based on hunches. Let us call him
"Guessing Ananda." Guessing Ananda is thirsty and guesses that
there is a glass of water waiting for him around the corner. Sure
enough, every time he has this hunch, there is a glass of water around
the corner. He drinks it, thus fulfilling his goal and providing
confirmation of his guess. Therefore, it seems that Guessing Ananda's
hunches have prama ya and are cases of prama. But how can guessing be a
means to veridical cognition (prama a) if it seems to be based on
nothing whatsoever?

First, let me point out another distinction made by Dharmakyrti: that
of erroneousness (bhranta). Like his predecessor Dig aga, Dharmakyrti
is committed to the view that ultimately the only cognitions that
correspond with reality are perceptions entirely free from conceptual
construction (nirvikalpaka pratyakSa). These perceptions lack any
concepts whatsoever (e.g., blue, cow, sharp, etc.) and can be thought
of as something like the "the given" or "raw data." It is only
these kinds of perceptions that can be called non-erroneous (abhranta).
Furthermore, it follows from Buddhist ontological commitments that
these perceptions are entirely momentary particulars.

Following this distinction, Katsura bifurcates Dharmakyrti's
epistemological considerations between the purely epistemological
(whether a cognition is erroneous) and the pragmatic (whether a
cognition is contradictory). The first concerns correspondence with
reality, while the second concerns fulfillment of human purposes.

Both conceptual perception (savikalpaka pratyakSa) and inference
(anumana) do not correspond with ultimate reality and are erroneous.
However, they are still prama as because are non-contradictory. They
still lead us to fulfill our purposes within the context of other
erroneous cognitions. This is why I have distinguished between two
kinds of prama in the chart above: cognitions are Prama 1 if they are
non-erroneous and non-contradictory (like conceptionless perception)
and Prama 2 if erroneous and noncontradictory (like conception-laden
perception and inference).

On this scheme, Ananda's non-contradictory guessing is definitely
erroneous and not a case of Prama 1. A guess cannot directly apprehend
the momentary particulars that constitute the glass of water and a
guess is necessarily conceptual ("I guess there is a glass of
water"). However, if guessing really is non-contradictory, then
there's no reason Guessing Ananda's cognition could not be a case
of Prama 2. This turns guessing into a prama a. In fact, guessing would
be no worse off than conceptual perception and inference under
Dharmakyrti's scheme.

The case of Guessing Ananda, like that of Psychic Norman, relies on a
possible world in which the example takes place. As it turns out,
however, guessing in the real world is usually contradictory, much more
often than either perception or inference. This reveals another
similarity between Dharmakyrti and Goldman: both are concerned
primarily to discover which epistemic processes actually work in the
real world, rather than which will work, in principle, in some possible
world.

Still, it may be objected that there seems to be something missing from
both accounts. Realist epistemologists (Naiyayikas, for instance29) may
be unnerved with the apparent lack of concern for truth as
correspondence. They might say that there ought to be something inside
our epistemology that guarantees that our beliefs and cognitions always
touch reality rather than possibly floating free and merely
occasionally becoming useful. Virtue reliabilism seems compatible with
anti-realism, at least if the pragmatic view of truth is emphasized and
Dharmakyrti emphatically is an anti-realist when it comes to all
cognitions except the elusive conceptionless perceptions.

For both Dharmakyrti and Goldman, it is my hunch that an epistemology
that helps us get by in the world of experience is good enough. We do
not need a Panglossian epistemology that seeks to be the best
epistemology of all possible worlds. For Dharmakyrti, regular people
have what Dunne calls "quotidian instrumentality."31 Most of our
cognitions may be ultimately false, but they do what we need them to
do, namely, help us fulfill our goals. Similarly, Quine says that
"... science is a conceptual bridge of our own making ..." Although
neither Quine nor Goldman are anti-realists in Dharmakyrti's sense,
as naturalized epistemologists they hold that there is no ultimate
epistemological standpoint to tell us once and for all whether our
beliefs correspond with ultimate reality. We mix concept-laden
discourse with experience and scientific evidence to produce beliefs
that help us get along in the world.

Additionally, both Goldman and Dharmakyrti see in this recognition of
epistemic imperfection the seeds of our improvement. Goldman argues
that normative scientific epistemology can lead us to improve our
epistemic virtues. Dharmakyrti's epistemology, by showing us that
most of our experience is conventional, suggests the possibility of
improvement through Buddhist practice, ultimately to Nirva a. While
Goldman's goals for epistemology are admittedly much more modest, I
believe there are enough similarities between Goldman and Dharmakyrti
to warrant further thinking about ways in which each can illuminate the
other. For instance, can the distinction between erroneousness and
contradictoriness help virtue reliabilism more fully answer the Psychic
Norman counter-example? Can modern science help Dharmakyrti's prama a
theory by justifying perception and inference or at least helping us
explain how they work? Could one construct a naturalized prama a-vada
or a more cognitive virtue reliabilism? While these are questions I
cannot answer here, I hope to have given some direction for further
investigation.

http://www.hawaii.edu/phil/gradconf/2006/presentations/EthanMills.pdf