reliabilismo

Reliabilismo, or reliabilism, is an externalist theory of epistemic justification and knowledge in contemporary epistemology. It holds that a belief is justified if it results from a cognitive process that is reliable—that is, it tends to produce true beliefs in a wide range of cases. The core idea shifts emphasis from internal reasons to the reliability of the process by which beliefs are formed, such as perception, memory, inference, and introspection. In its standard form, often called process reliabilism and associated with Alvin Goldman, justification is granted to beliefs produced by processes that have a high success rate in yielding true beliefs in the agent's normal environment. Under favorable conditions, such beliefs can count as knowledge when they are true and not undermined by defeaters.

Variants of reliabilism differ on how to specify reliability. Some texts appeal to general reliability across nearby possible worlds, while others employ tracking or causal criteria that tie justification to the process's tendency to track truth. The approach is externalist because it can ground justification in factors outside the subject's conscious awareness.

The reliabilist program has been offered as a response to Gettier problems by insisting that justification be anchored in the reliability of the process, not merely in internal evidence. Critics, however, point to questions about what counts as a reliable process, how reliability should be measured in different environments, and how reliabilism handles skeptical or defeater-rich scenarios. Still, reliabilism remains a central family of theories in the landscape of epistemology, contrasting with evidentialist and internalist approaches.