ABSTRACT
The first section of Chapter 7 contains a theory about checking and bootstrapping. The second section investigates how this theory can be used to explain and to solve knowledge puzzles about bootstrapping. It is first shown that inductive bootstrapping is a monotonous method that always indicates that the source in question is reliable regardless of whether it actually is reliable or not. For this reason, bootstrapping fails to be a method of checking a source’s reliability. This is also true for deductive bootstrapping and bootstrapping about the accuracy of a source’s indications. Some alternative ways of checking the reliability or accuracy of a source are investigated and it is concluded that these possibilities have certain limitations. Second, it is argued that we have to distinguish between checking that p , checking that a source O truly indicates that p and checking of O’s indication that p that it is true. This distinction will also be relevant in Chapter 8 when various ways of checking whether one’s own beliefs are true are investigated. We will see that each of these checking processes has different sensitivity conditions and, consequently, different limitations. The second section of Chapter 7 investigates how SAC and KSAC can explain knowledge puzzles about bootstrapping and how they can contribute to solving them.
