It is sometimes said that playing it safe is always more reasonable th — Roderick Chisholm

"The objectivity principle tells us what kind of justification we can have for beliefs about justification: (A5) If S knows that p, then, if S believes that he knows that p, then S knows that he knows that p"

"Our second "anti-Pyrrhonian" principle is this: (A4) If anything is probable for S, then something is certain for S"

"What we have been saying, of course, is not likely to convince the skeptics and we can hardly claim to have "refuted" them. But our question was not, "Can we refute the skeptics?" Our question was: "Are there positive reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of succeeding in the epistemic enterprise?" The answer seems to be that there are no such reasons. And therefore it is not unreasonable for us to continue."

"In making their assumptions, epistemologists presuppose that they are rational, beings. This means, in part, that they have certain properties which are such that, if they ask themselves, with respect to any one of these properties, whether or not they have that property, then it will be evident to them that they have it. It means further that they are able to know what they think and believe and that they can recognize inconsistencies."

"The category of being beyond reasonable doubt is illustrated by the proposition that the building in which I now find myself will be here tomorrow. The proposition is not evident. But for me—and I hope that for others— the proposition is such that believing it is more justified than withholding it. Obviously there are some true propositions which are such that we are more justified in believing them than in withholding them. Are there also false propositions which we are more justified in believing than in withholding? We will find that this may well be true. Or, more exactly, we will find that, if philosophical skepticism is false, and if, as a matter of fact, we do know many of the things about the world that we now think we know, then it is quite possible that some false propositions are such that it is more reasonable for us to believe those propositions than it is for us to withhold them."

"Strictly speaking, "The wine tastes sour to me," and "something looks red to me," do not express what is self-presenting in our sense of this term. For the first statement implies that there is a certain thing—namely, the wine— that I am tasting, and the second statement implies that there is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me. But, "I am tasting wine," and, "There is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me," do not express what is self-presenting. What justifies me in thinking that I am tasting wine is not simply the fact that I am tasting wine, and what justifies me in thinking that a certain thing is appearing red to me (and that I am not, say, merely suffering from a hallucination) is not simply the fact that a certain thing is appearing red to me. To arrive at what is self-presenting in these cases, we must remove the reference to the external thing—to the wine in, "The wine tastes sour to me," and to the appearing thing in, "That thing appears red to me." This, however, is very difficult to do, since our language was not developed for any such philosophical purpose."