Reliabilism: Holistic or Simple?

The thought behind this is that there are many belief-forming processes, some reliable and some not; those that are reliable yield justified beliefs. Though this is how Reliabilism is often formulated today, and is similar to how Alvin Goldman ([1979]) initially formulates the view, a more sophisticated rule-based version of the theory is offered by Goldman in Epistemology and Cognition ([1986]). This version of the theory is widely cited and Goldman has made clear that he thinks that the best version of Reliabilism is the more sophisticated version offered in the later work. The more sophisticated version makes use of a rule framework, and has us focus on the total reliability of an epistemic system that follows those rules, rather than individual processes. Goldman endorses: