Abstract

The contrast between Thomas Reid's epistemological concerns and a common core of the classical approach to epistemology is the following one: Reid abandons the classical use for criteria of knowledge and pushes the problem of the justification of beliefs to the level of the mental faculties from which the beliefs arise. A similar shift plays various roles in Keith Lehrer's coherentist epistemology. However, this shift raises several difficulties: (i) the impact of epistemological concerns on actual intellectual inquiries gets lost; (ii) the favored model of justification lacks in generality; (iii) 'vertical justification' (which proceeds via the faculty) is not independent from 'horizontal justification' (not proceeding via the faculty).