 Huemer offers his view as an improvement on a cruder view once defended by Chisholm (1980) that is often called “epistemic conservatism” and sometimes, more aptly, “doxastic conservatism.” The doxastic conservative takes the mere fact that you believe some proposition P to provide prima facie justification for believing P. This view does not imply that the mere fact that you believe something renders the belief justified, for it may be that your belief is prima facie justified but not ultima facie justified: if you have good reasons to disbelieve P, or good reasons to think that your belief that P is unreliable or untrustworthy, then your belief is “defeated” and not justified. In other words, according to doxastic conservatism, if S believes that P then, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing that P. 