In this paper, Goldman modifies his causal theory of knowledge to require more than simple causation. He refers to the added requirement as “reliability,” and this and similar accounts of knowledge have come to be labeled “reliabilism.”
• Goldman’s introduction has some things to say about differences between the account presented here and his earlier causal theory. His statement that his new approach would “abandon” the requirement of causal connection could suggest that it is less restrictive than the old one, but his focus is instead on strengthening his account to rule out cases that would qualify as knowledge under his old approach. Of the two terms he uses in describing his new approach—“reliability” and “discrimination”—the former is the more important; you might think of discrimination as the typical requirement for reliability in the case of perceptual knowledge, which is Goldman’s focus here.
• Section I motivates Goldman’s departure from a pure causal theory, and the example of the barns is now a part of the standard suite of examples against which to test an account of knowledge. The latter part of the section is given over to discussing the idea of “relevant” possibilities. The first full paragraph on p. 775 introduces the idea and indicates why it is important. Its connection with issues of skepticism is something you are likely to see again in the course.
• In sections II and III—which I have not assigned—Goldman develops his account of perceptual knowledge. He summarizes the account (on p. 786) as follows:
S has perceptual knowledge if and only if not only does his perceptual mechanism produce true belief, but there are no relevant counterfactual situations in which the same belief would be produced via an equivalent percept and in which the belief would be false.
The reference to an “equivalent percept” allows someone to know, for example, that a dachshund he sees is a dog even though he could not reliably discriminate other dogs from wolves. The idea is that, even if the possibility of a wolf is relevant, the percept in such a case might not be equivalent to the one in the case of a dachshund.
• The key point for our purposes in Goldman’s concluding section IV is his discussion of “Cartesian” epistemology. The account of knowledge you have seen in ch. 13 of Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy counts as Cartesian in this sense. Think about difference between Cartesian justification and the sort of justification Goldman’s account is concerned with. (Although what Goldman says here suggests he might not approve of using the term “justification” in speaking of his approach, it came to be used in that way by him and others.)