Laurence Bonjour: Internalism and Externalism Flashcards
What is an externalistic conception of justification
Whether a belief is justified is determined in part by facts external to the subject.
The subject in question doesn’t necessarily know whether his or belief is justified.
What is an internalistic conception of justification
A belief is justified iff the condition for justification is cognitively available to the subject in question.
That is, the subject in question should always know whether his or her belief is justified.
What is the difference between the two?
On an internalistic conception of justification, a subject is always in position to determine whether his or her belief is justified.
On an externalistic conception, a subject is not always in position to determine that.
According to Bonjour, what is the central rationale for internalism? (bottom of p. 237)
Insofar as I want my beliefs to be true, what better way to evaluate them is there than to ask whether they are justified?
A subject is in position to know whether his or her beliefs are justified.
What does the “internal” or “internalism” mean? (p. 238)
What is appealed to for justification must be internal to the individual from a first person perspective. And this should be unproblematically available to him or her.
The reasons or justifications for our beliefs are always available to the subject.
One objection to Internalism is the Unsophisticated Epistemic Subject objection. What is the objection?
Dogs have all kinds of beliefs.
But are the reasons for those beliefs available to the dog? It is doubtful.
What is the threat of Skepticsim objection to Internalism?
As Descartes has pointed out, we do not have sufficient internalistic justification for many of our ordinary beliefs.
So then, we do not have sufficient justification for these. So then, it looks like a internalistic conception of justification is going to relegate us to radical skepticism.
What is Reliabilism?
What makes a belief epistemically justified is the cognitive reliability of the causal process via which it is was produced.
If the causal process is in fact reliable, the process yields genuine justification.
If not, it does not.
What makes Reliabilism an externalistic conception of justification?
Whether a causal process is in fact reliable or not is not always accessible to the subject in question.
Whether it is or not is external to the subject.
What is the Cartesian Demon Worlds objection to Reliabilism?
The beliefs of the people in the Cartestian Demon World are justified.
But causal processes by which they form their beliefs are not reliable.
That goes counter to what Reliabilism says.
Bonjour concludes both Externalism and Internalism face problems. He then suggests that it might be a mistake to think that we have to choose one or the other. What is his reasoning? (p. 256-260)
These two conceptions of justification are important in different ways.
Internalistic conceptions address the issue of first person justification.
Externalistic conceptions can help with “the meliorative epistemological project”—the general project of assessing and improving the reliability of human cognitive efforts.
