In Defense of Epistemic Circularity David Alexander Received: 5 April 2010 / Accepted: 7 July 2010 / Published online: 28 July 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract In this paper I defend epistemic circularity by arguing that the “No Self- Support” principle (NSS) is false. This principle, ultimately due to Fumerton (1995), states that one cannot acquire a justified belief in the reliability of a source of belief by trusting that very source. I argue that NSS has the skeptical consequence that the trustworthiness of all of our sources ultimately depends upon the trustworthiness of certain fundamental sources – sources that we cannot justifiably believe to be reliable. This is a problem, I claim, because if the trustworthiness of all of our sources depends upon sources that we should not believe to be reliable, then a reflective individual should not trust any of his sources at all. The hidden cost of rejecting epistemic circularity is thus the unacceptable skeptical thesis that reflective individuals like you and I have no justified beliefs whatsoever. Keywords Epistemic circularity . Self-support . Skepticism . Fumerton The question of whether sources of belief such as sense perception, reason and memory are reliable is something of a philosophical black hole. On the one hand, it is hard to resist the pull of the question. After all, anyone who genuinely cares about whether his beliefs are true ought to be equally concerned about whether the sources upon which he relies tend to lead him to truth or not. On the other hand, it is also easy to feel that this is a problem from which there is no escape. For in order to acquire a reasonable belief about whether our sources are reliable, we will have to rely on some sources of belief. By relying on those sources, we seem to be presupposing that they are in fact reliable. It therefore seems inevitable that any attempt to defend the reliability of all of our sources is doomed to beg the question. Faced with the prospects of such circularity, it might seem best to resist the pull of the problem in the first place. Acta Anal (2011) 26:223–241 DOI 10.1007/s12136-010-0100-2 D. Alexander (*) Iowa State University, 433 Catt Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA e-mail: alexand@iastate.edu