Objections to Reliabilism: Multiple Methods of Belief-Formation
Suppose that you are walking home at dusk. As you approach your house, you see a distant figure walking towards you. Recognising who it is, you form the belief that your father has come to meet you. By what method did you arrive at this belief?
On one level, the method that you used was sense-perception. On another level, the method used was sight. On yet another, it was night-vision, or night-vision at a distance. Factor in your use of memory, and it is clear that there are many different ways of labelling the process by which you arrived at your belief.
It may well be, though, that some of these methods are reliable but that others are not. Perhaps night-vision is reliable, but not at a distance; perhaps vision is reliable, but our sense in general lead us astray. There are only arbitrary answers, then, to the question as to whether the method that you used to form the belief is reliable, and so reliabilism cannot provide a definitive answer to the question as to whether or not your belief is justified.