| I use research from cognitive psychology to help reveal the nature of belief and of memory experience, and this clarity helps answer a fundamental question in epistemology: does one's justification for believing depend entirely on one's mental life? My two primary goals are to defend evidentialism, the most promising theory that answers `yes' to this question, and to challenge reliabilism, the most prominent theory that answers `no'. To these ends, I answer the problem of stored beliefs, a common objection to evidentialism that concerns memory. I argue that the cognitive psychology of memory reveals that, if either of the two leading theories of belief is correct, there is no problem of stored beliefs. I show that preservationism, the orthodox and unchallenged solution to the problem of stored beliefs, is either false or needlessly more complex than an evidentialist solution. Preservationism states that memory preserves the justification of preserved beliefs. Since reliabilism entails preservationism, it faces a serious problem. Finally, I argue that research on metacognition, the monitoring and controlling of cognitive processes, in memory favors evidentialism over reliabilism. |
