Fergus Dale Prien

Fergus Dale Prien, ‘A Reliabilist Strategy for Solving the Problem of Induction’ (MA in Philosophy, 2020)

In this thesis I develop a two-stage strategy in which a simple reliabilist theory of knowledge and justification can be employed so as to solve David Hume’s famous ‘problem of induction’. In so doing, the key arguments I make include: (i) that justification possesses an externalist character so we do not need to show how we know that we possess inductive knowledge, and (ii) that an inductivist rule-circular justification of induction is defensible if induction is understood in terms of a reliabilist theory of knowledge and justification.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Howard Sankey, Professor Greg Restall, Dr Brennan McDavid