Epistemic conservatism is a view in epistemology about the structure of reasons or justification for belief.
[2] Expanding the thesis, epistemic conservatism implies that it is unreasonable to revise or alter our personal beliefs and ideologies without good reasons to do so.
After a long time, this person might have lost evidence supporting this specific belief, but we are intuitively drawn to claiming that they are still justified.
[4] In his objections, Foley describes a situation where epistemic conservatism makes irrational beliefs rational, where a contradiction exists.
[4][5] "Detective Jones has definitively narrowed down the suspects in a crime to two individuals, Lefty and Righty.
However, PEC allows for this because Jones's belief that Lefty is the culprit is defeated since he now has equal evidence to believe that Righty committed the crime.