 Proceeding under these constraints, Goldman was led to the “reliable process” theory as follows. (Note that the main concept to be tackled here is doxastic justifiedness rather than propositional justifiedness. That is, it focuses on what it takes for a belief to be justified rather than what it takes for someone to have grounds for forming such a belief.) First, examples were adduced to show that the justifiedness of particular beliefs depends on how those beliefs are caused, or causally sustained, in the mind of the thinker. Suppose Arthur justifiedly believes a conjunction of propositions, \(q \amp r\), from which proposition \(p\) follows logically. Further suppose that, soon after forming his belief in this conjunction, Arthur also forms a belief in \(p\). Does it follow from this that Arthur’s belief in \(p\) is justified? No. Although Arthur believes \(q \amp r\), this conjunction may not have played any causal role in his coming to believe \(p\). He may have formed his belief in \(p\) purely by wishful thinking. Perhaps he hoped \(p\) would be true, and therefore (somehow) came to believe it. Alternatively, suppose Arthur employed confused reasoning that began with \(q \amp r\), and serendipitously led to \(p\). In neither case is his resulting belief in \(p\) justified. This shows that a necessary condition for a belief to be justified is that it be produced or generated in a suitable way. Of course, this immediately raises the question: which kinds of belief-forming processes are suitable and which are defective or unsuitable?