SUBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY

A "subjectivist epistemology" is one that implies the standards of rational belief are those of the individual believer or those of the believer's community. Thus, subjectivism can come in either an individualistic form or a social form. A key negative test of subjectivism is whether an account implies that by being rational one is assured of having beliefs that are more reliable than they would be otherwise—that is, more reliable than they would be if one were not rational. Thus, reliabilist accounts of rational beliefs are paradigmatically objective. So are traditional foundationalist accounts. By contrast, if an account implies that the standards one must meet if one's beliefs are to be rational are those that one would regard as intellectually defensible were one to be ideally reflective (Foley 1987, 1993), then the account is subjective. Similarly, an account is subjective if it implies that one's beliefs are rational if they meet the standards of one's community (Rorty 1979) or the standards of the recognized experts in one's community (Stich 1985). Likewise, an account is subjective if it implies that one's beliefs are rational if they meet the standards of the human community at large, provided nothing else in the account implies that adhering to such standards will reliably produce true beliefs.

One of the considerations favoring a subjectivist epistemology is that it provides an attractive way of describing what is going on in skeptical scenarios—for example, one in which everything appears normal from my subjective point of view even though my brain has been removed from my body and placed in a vat, where it is being fed sensory experiences by a deceiving scientist. In such a scenario, almost everything I believe about my immediate surroundings would be false. Hence, I would have little knowledge about these surroundings, but what I believe about them might nonetheless be rational. Indeed, my beliefs would be as rational as my current beliefs about my surroundings. The most plausible explanation as to why this is so is that there is at least one important sense of rational belief according to which having rational beliefs is essentially a matter of meeting subjectively generated standards. Thus, by being envatted I may be deprived of the opportunity of having knowledge about my surroundings, but I am not necessarily also deprived of an opportunity of having rational beliefs.

See also Classical Foundationalism; Epistemology; Reliabilism; Social Epistemology.

Bibliography

Foley, R. The Theory of Epistemic Rationality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Foley, Richard. Working without a Net. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Rorty, R. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Stich, S. "Could Man Be an Irrational Animal?" Synthese 64 (1985): 115–135.

Richard Foley (1996)