Knowledge and belief /

Schmitt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) supports the popular view, called "reliabilism," that justified belief is reliably formed belief: roughly, belief resulting from a belief-forming process that tends to yield true beliefs. He opposes the influential view, suggested by Descartes, that one who has a justified belief must be able to tell by reflection alone that one's belief is justified. He also opposes the view that a belief is justified for one only if the belief is sanctioned by one's own beliefs about what is justified. Schmitt supports the unpopular view that reliabilism was prominent in 17th- and 18th-century theory of knowledge, particularly in the writings of David Hume. He contends also that the kind of skepticism found in Descartes, appealing to what is possibly the case, is not prevalent in ancient Greek epistemology, but emerges late, in post-Platonic, Pyrrhonian skepticism. In general, Schmitt proposes that the history of epistemology is not characteristically in agreement with the epistemology of Descartes. The book is nontechnical, clearly written, and largely accessible to nonspecialists. Recommended for any academic library supporting work on the theory of knowledge. P. K. Moser; Loyola University of Chicago