Online research in philosophy

It is currently fashionable to hold that deontology induces internalism. That is, those who think that epistemic justification is essentially a matter of duty fulfillment are thought to have a good reason for accepting internalism in epistemology. I shall argue that no deontological conception of epistemic justification provides a good reason for endorsing internalism. My main contention is that a requirement having to do with epistemic defeat-a requirement that many externalists impose on knowledge-guarantees the only sorts of deontological justification that have a chance at inducing internalism. Given this compatibility of externalism and deontology, we may safely conclude that deontology by itself doesn't lend support to internalism.

Internalism in epistemology is the view that all the factors relevant to the justification of a belief are importantly internal to the believer, while externalism is the view that at least some of those factors are external. This extremely modest first approximation cries out for refinement (which we undertake below), but is enough to orient us in the right direction, namely that the debate between internalism and externalism is bound up with the controversy over the correct account of the distinction between justified beliefs and unjustified beliefs.1 Understanding that distinction has occasionally been obscured by attention to the analysis of knowledge and to the Gettier problem, but our view is that these problems, while interesting, should not completely seduce philosophers away from central questions about epistemic justification. A plausible starting point in the discussion of justification is that the distinction between justified beliefs and unjustified beliefs is not the same as the distinction between true beliefs and false beliefs. This follows from the mundane observation that it is possible to rationally believe..

Is the nature of testimonial warrant epistemically internalist or externalist? I will argue that the question should be answered ‘yes!’ The disjunction is not exclusive. Rather, a testimonial belief may possess epistemically internalist warrant – justification – as well as epistemically externalist warrant – entitlement. I use the label ‘pluralism’ to denote the view that there are both internalist and externalist species of genuinely epistemic warrant and argue for pluralism in the epistemology of testimony. In doing so, I begin to develop an account of testimonial entitlement as well as one of testimonial justification. I conclude by illuminating a positive account by way of contrast with Paul Faulkner’s related approach. Thus, the paper is structured as follows: In Section 1, I articulate some terminology and some distinctions along with a word of motivation for the discussion. In Section 2, I develop a distinct positive case for upholding a social externalist conception of testimonial warrant. However, upholding such a view, I will argue, is compatible with embracing an epistemically internalist species of warrant for testimonial belief. In Section 3, I consider the fertility of the pluralist stance by exploring both testimonial entitlement and justification. In Section 4, I illuminate my account by contrasting it with Paul Faulkner’s “hybrid theory” of testimony. The criticism of Faulkner will serve to (i) bring out some nuances of my own proposal and (ii) provide a perspective on the nature of the internalism-externalism dispute. In section 5, I suggest that although the present exploration is incomplete and inconclusive, it is nevertheless promising. Indeed, I conclude with the bold conjecture that the pluralism in the epistemology of testimony may serve as a model for other areas of epistemology.

Inferential Internalists accept the Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ), according to which one has justification for believing P on the basis of E only if one has justification for believing that E makes probable P. Richard Fumerton has defended PIJ by appeal to examples, and recently Adam Leite has argued that this principle is supported by considerations regarding the nature of responsible belief. In this paper, I defend a form of externalism against both arguments. This form of externalism recognizes what I call the phenomenon of reflective defeat: if one is justified in not believing that E makes probable P, then this defeats whatever justification one has for believing P upon the basis of E. I argue that this modified version of externalism has the virtue of accommodating the intuitions that motivate internalism, without the cost of the vicious regress that makes internalism so unattractive.

I argue that given a certain commitment of internalism - that epistemic twins are equally justified - and a straightforward understanding of what is required of epistemic twins - that in order for S to be justified in belief that p, there much be some proposition about which S is infallible (though not, for course, p!), based on what is common among all of S's epistemic twins. I take no stand on whether this is a problem for internalism.

Internalism about epistemic justification (henceforth, ‘internalism’) says that a belief B is epistemically justified for S only if S is aware of some good-making feature of B, some feature that makes for B’s having positive epistemic status: e.g., evidence for B. Externalists with respect to epistemic justification (‘externalists’) deny this awareness requirement. Michael Bergmann has recently put this dilemma against internalism: awareness admits of a strong and a weak construal; given the strong construal, internalism is subject to debilitating regress troubles; given the weak construal, internalism is unmotivated; either way, internalism is in serious trouble. I argue for two claims in this article. First, Bergmann’s dilemma argument is unmotivated: he’s given no good reason for accepting one of its crucial premises. And second, Bergmann’s dilemma argument is unsound: the crucial premise in question is false.

In this paper, I argue that what underlies internalism about justification is a rationalist conception of justification, not a deontological conception of justification, and I argue for the plausibility of this rationalist conception of justification. The rationalist conception of justification is the view that a justified belief is a belief that is held in a rational way; since we exercise our rationality through conscious deliberation, the rationalist conception holds that a belief is justified iff a relevant possible instance of conscious deliberation would endorse the belief. The importance of conscious deliberation stems from its role in guiding us in acquiring true beliefs: whereas the externalist holds that if we wish to acquire true beliefs, we have to begin by assuming that some of our usual methods of belief formation generally provide us with true beliefs, the internalist holds that if we form beliefs by conscious deliberation, we can be conscious of reasons for thinking that our beliefs are true. Conscious deliberation can make us conscious of reasons because it proceeds via rational intuitions. I argue that despite the fallibility of rational intuition, rational intuitions do enable us to become conscious of reasons for belief.

This chapter is guided by the hypothesis that the point and purpose of using the concept of justification in epistemic evaluation is tied to its role in the practice of critical reflection. In section one, I propose an analysis of justification as the epistemic property in virtue of which a belief has the potential to survive ideal critical reflection. In section two, I use this analysis in arguing for a form of access internalism on which one has justification to believe a proposition if and only if one has higher-order justification to believe that one has justification to believe that proposition. In section three, I distinguish between propositional and doxastic versions of access internalism and argue that the propositional version avoids familiar objections to the doxastic version. In section four, I argue that the propositional version of access internalism also explains and vindicates internalist intuitions about cases. In section five, I conclude with some reflections on the relationship between critical reflection, responsibility and personhood.

The internalism/externalism debate is of interest in epistemology since it addresses one of the most fundamental questions in the discipline: what is the basic nature of knowledge and epistemic justification? It is generally held that if a positive epistemic status obtains, this is not a brute fact. Rather if a belief is, for example, justified, it is justified in virtue of some further condition(s) obtaining. What has been called epistemic internalism holds, as the label suggests, is that all the relevant factors that determine justification must be “internal” (in a sense that needs to be specified). Epistemic externalism is the denial of internalism. Epistemic internalism about justification is the subject of this article. <br> After introducing the central intuitive considerations that have tended to motivate internalism, this paper will explore different ways of construing the internalist position (or family of positions). In addition to classical formulations, more recent formulations will be discussed, concluding with a discussion of an emerging position known as “Epistemological Disjunctivism”, which its advocates claim preserves the most important features of more traditional forms of internalism, while avoiding their difficulties. Epistemological Disjunctivism is particularly worthy of attention since if true, it promises to bridge internalist and externalist epistemologies, bringing a rapprochement to two sides of what may otherwise appear a deep and intractable debate about the fundamental nature of epistemology. <br>.

Access internalism about epistemic justification is the thesis that a person’s justification for a belief is directly accessible to that person, in the sense that the person can have direct awareness of whatever is functioning as the actual justification for the belief. This thesis is distinguished into a weak and a strong version, and a number of arguments in favor of the access internalist position are assessed. It is concluded that none of the arguments in support of access internalism is satisfactory.