Abstract
There is widespread suspicion that there is a principled conflict between epistemic internalism and content externalism (or anti-individualism). Despite the prominence of this suspicion, it has rarely been substantiated by explicit arguments. However, Duncan Pritchard and Jesper Kallestrup have recently provided a prima facie argument concluding that internalism about knowledge and externalism about content are incompatible. I criticize the incompatibilist argument and conclude that the purported incompatibility is, at best, prima facie. This is, in part, because several steps in the argument are faulty and, in part, because there are promising responses available to the compatibilists.
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Notes
Brown, in conversation. Note that Brown discusses anti-individualism which, according to Tyler Burge, is a thesis about the nature of representational mental states (Burge 2007, et passim, see, e.g., the Introduction p 3). Kallestrup and Pritchard discuss content externalism which is a thesis about the contents of representational states. The two theses are intimately connected. Since I address the argument by Kallestrup and Pritchard, I follow them in focusing on content externalism.
A notable exception is (Bonjour 1992). Bonjour’s incompatibilist argument is criticized by James Chase (Chase 2001) who is, in turn, criticized by Anthony Brueckner (2001). Kallestrup and Pritchard cite Bonjour’s article as inspiration and claim that their incompatibilist argument “...is not touched by Chase’s remarks.” (Kallestrup and Pritchard 2004, p 345). Jessica Brown has an interesting discussion of related matters in (Brown 2007). These authors focus on epistemic internalism about justification rather than knowledge. While this is, in many ways, a more natural approach, the ensuing discussion will concern the incompatibilist argument regarding internalism about knowledge.
I will first address the argument as it stands and then discuss the qualification that it is prima facie.
See (Bonjour 1992) for more on the weak–strong distinction.
The notion of ‘reflective determination’ might suggest that the constraint is factive. But I doubt this is Kallestrup and Pritchard’s intention. Kallestrup and Pritchard do not discuss whether ‘reflective access’ is merely doxastic (i.e., consists in the ability to generate beliefs about the factors in question) or epistemic (i.e., consists in the ability to generate warranted beliefs about those factors).
A BIV* is characterized as a brain-in-a-vat which has never had any causal connection to water either directly or indirectly.
Feldman is a mentalist-internalist rather than an accessibilist-internalist (see Feldman and Conee 2001). But the point in question is perfectly general.
See, e.g., (Bonjour 1985, pp 41–45). I regard the clairvoyants as possessing externalist knowledge because I subscribe to pluralism about knowledge. This is the view that there are both internalist and externalist kinds of knowledge. Now that I am at it, let me also note that I doubt that the epistemological internalism–externalism distinction is best drawn by an ‘accessibilist criterion.’
However, Tyler Burge has considered a view according to which supervenience holds for certain representational states but in which anti-individualism is nevertheless true of them. He regards the view ‘metaphysically unattractive’ and notes it only to point out “...that there is a notational difference between the doctrines of local supervenience-failure and anti-individualism” (Burge 2003, p372). As noted, Burge’s anti-individualism is primarily about the representational states whereas Kallestrup and Pritchard are concerned with the contents of such states.
Thanks to Matt Lockard for bringing up this suggestion.
Fun fact: Some such arguments rely essentially on content externalism (or anti-individualism).
Kallestrup and Pritchard have questioned this inclination (in correspondence). However, even if we assume that the argument does establish inconsistency prima facie, the second point is simply that there is a way for the knowledge-internalist to avoid it: By adopting an RA epistemology.
In particular, it may be that versions of content externalism according to which representational mental states are object or kind dependent will give rise to incompatibility. See (Brown 2007) for an interesting discussion of related issues.
References
Brown, J. (2004). Anti-individualism and knowledge. A Bradford book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brown, J. (2007). Externalism in mind and epistemology. In S. Goldberg (Ed.), Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press (in press).
Bonjour, L. (1985) The structure of empirical knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bonjour, L. (1992). Internalism/externalism. In J. Dancy & E. Sosa (Eds.), A companion to epistemology (pp. 132–136). Oxford: Blackwell.
Brueckner, A. (2001). The consistency of content-externalism and justification-internalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 80, 512–515.
Burge, T. (2003). The indexical strategy: Reply to Owens. In M. Hahn, & B Ramberg (Eds.), Reflections and replies. Bradford: MIT Press.
Burge, T. (2007). Foundations of mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chase, J. (2001). Is externalism about content inconsistent with internalism about justification? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 79, 227–246.
Feldman, R., & Conee, E. (2001). Internalism defended. American Philosophical Quarterly, 38(1), 1–15.
Feldman, R. (2004). In search of internalism and externalism. In R. Schantz (Ed.), The externalist challenge (pp. 143–156). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Kallestrup, J., & Pritchard, D. (2004). An argument for the inconsistency of content externalism and epistemic internalism. Philosophia, 31, 345–354.
Acknowledgement
I am very grateful to Jesper Kallestrup and Duncan Pritchard for the very helpful discussions and correspondence. Thanks also to Jessica Brown, Thomas Geisnæs, Nikolaj Jang Pedersen, and the participants of a workshop at UCLA. The paper is dedicated to Julie to whom I am also thankful.
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Gerken, M. Is Internalism About Knowledge Consistent with Content Externalism?. Philosophia 36, 87–96 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9095-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9095-3