A More Effective Epistemic Regress Problem

The traditional epistemic regress problem preys upon the thought that knowledge requires something more than correct judgment. That is, if we must earn or succeed at something in order to lay claim to knowledge, the skeptic can employ the epistemic regress problem to attack our ability to meet those success conditions. Despite the fact that many contemporary epistemologists do maintain some success conditions for knowledge, epistemology largely carries on unphased by the epistemic regress problem. In this paper, I will argue that the traditional epistemic regress problem is insufficient in its generality and that, for this reason, many who should otherwise engage with the problem are correct to ignore it. After elaborating on this problem, I will propose a more effective version of the epistemic regress problem based on a new, minimal epistemic standard that creates epistemic success conditions applicable to all normative epistemologies.