An argument for the inconsistency of content externalism and epistemic internalism

Philosophia (United States)

Volumn 31, Issue 3-4, 2004, Pages 345-354

  Pritchard, Duncan ^a   Kallestrup, Jesper ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38849199350     PISSN: 00483893     EISSN: 15749274     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF02385190     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Donald Davidson, 'Knowing One's Own Mind', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60 (1987), pp. 441-58.
2. Tyler Burge, 'Individualism and Self- Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988).
3. Paul Boghossian, 'Content and Self-Knowledge', Philosophical Topics 17 (1989), pp. 5-26.
4. Michael McKinsey, 'Anti-Individualism and Privileged Access', Analysis 51 (1991), pp. 9-16.
5. Duncan Pritchard, 'McKinsey Paradoxes, Radical Scepticism, and the Transmission of Knowledge across Known Entailments', Synthese 130 (2002), pp. 279-302.
6. Chase, 'Is Extemalism about Content Inconsistent with Intemalism about Justification?', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2001), pp. 227-46.
7. Putnam, The Meaning ofMeaning, reprinted in his Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, pp. 215-72, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)
8. Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chapter one.
9. This point is important because the content internalist may well refuse to endorse strong supervenience - i.e., deny that certain mental contents are shared by doppelgingers in different possible worlds. There may be possible worlds (with deviant natural laws et cetera) which differ from the actual world to such an extent that doppelgfingers fail to share mental properties that they have in common in the actual world and in nearby possible worlds.
10. Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, Some Content is Narrow' in Mental Causation, (eds.) John Heil & Alfred Mele, pp. 259-82, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 271-272.
11. Of course, some externalists do reject the internalist notion of justification out-right
12. David Lewis, 'Elusive Knowledge', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996), pp. 549-67, p. 551
13. the point is only that such a denial is a non-essential component of the extemalist position.
14. Brandom, Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism', The Monist 81 (1998) pp. 371-92, p. 371.
15. He is not the only one to view the debate in this way. For example, Alvin Plantinga's opposition to epistemological internalism does not consist in a rejection of the internalist notion of justification per se, but rather in its claim that such a notion could perform the sort of 'threshold' role that a fully-fledged epistemic property (which he terms, generically, 'warrant'), could play. That is, the intemalist notion of justification may well be important to epistemology, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge
16. Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), passim.
17. Indeed, Brandom endorses what he terms a 'weak' extemalism that holds that the cases in which an agent knows but lacks internalist justification are only peripheral. For more on Brandom's position in this respect
18. Brandom, 'Knowledge and the Social Articulation of the Space of Reasons', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995), pp. 895-908.
19. Alvin Goldman, 'Strong and Weak Justification', Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), pp. 51-69.
20. Bonjour, 'Externalism/Intemalism', A Companion to Epistemology, (eds.) J. Dancy & E. Sosa, pp. 132-6, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 136.
21. Chase, op. cit., p. 237.
22. In a related fashion, Chase (op. cit., pp. 230-6) also discusses a sub-argument of
23. Boghossians, op. cit., paper on the incompatibility of content externalism and first-person authority which contends that there are certain features of the epistemic intemalist account of justification that make it incompatible with content extemalism. We are happy to accept Chase's critique of both of these arguments. Nevertheless, since these arguments (and Chase's response) are concerned with the internalist notion of justification rather than knowledge, accepting this does nothing to undermine the core thesis argued for here.
24. As Putnam himself recognises, this qualification is important. After all, even a BIV might have been in some sort of causal connection with water, either directly (in the past when she wasn't a BIV), or indirectly (via the neuroscientist operating on her brain).
25. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, op. cit., chapter one.
26. One might think that the internalist could block this move by committing her theory to some form of 'relevant alternatives' thesis, such as that espoused by
27. Fred Dretske, 'Epistemic Operators', Journal of Philosophy 67, pp. 1007-1023.
28. The problem with this sort of strategy is that it is essentially allied to an externalist epistemology. In any case, relevant alternative theses have problems of their own, so the net dialectical result of this move would be to make the contentious intemalist epistemological position hostage to a further thesis that is itself just as contentious. For more discussion of the relationship between epistemological externalism and the relevant alternatives thesis
29. Pritchard, 'Radical Scepticism, Epistemological Externalism and Closure', Theoria 69 (2002), pp. 129-61.
30. McKinsey, op. cit.