Philosophy Compass 5 (10):840-853 (2010)
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Abstract |
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 obtaining. What has been called epistemic internalism holds, as the label suggests, is that all the relevant factors that determine justification must be “internal”. Epistemic externalism is the denial of internalism. Epistemic internalism about justification is the subject of this article. After introducing the central intuitive considerations that have tended to motivate internalism, this paper will explore different ways of construing the internalist position. 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.
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Keywords | Epistemology Epistemic Justification Internalism / Externalism |
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DOI | 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00333.x |
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References found in this work BETA
The Structure of Empirical Knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Varieties of Externalism.J. Adam Carter, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos & Duncan Pritchard - 2014 - Philosophical Issues 24 (1):63-109.
Epistemological Disjunctivism and the New Evil Demon.B. J. C. Madison - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (1):61-70.
Epistemic Value and the New Evil Demon.B. J. C. Madison - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (1):89-107.
Active Externalism and Epistemic Internalism.J. Adam Carter & S. Orestis Palermos - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (4):753-772.
View all 16 citations / Add more citations
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