JUSTIFICATION WITHOUT AWARENESS:

A DEFENSE OF EPISTEMIC EXTERNALISM

Michael Bergmann

PART I: AGAINST INTERNALISM

1. A Dilemma for Internalism

1. Justification and Knowledge

2. Understanding Internalism

2.1. What It Is

2.2. Why It Is Held

3. The Dilemma for Internalism

3.1. An Initial Statement of the Dilemma

3.2. Premise (III): Vicious Regress Problems

3.3. Premise (IV): The Subject’s Perspective Objection

3.4. Premise (V): Rejecting Internalism

2. No Escape

1. Applying the Dilemma to Particular Cases

1.1. A Perceptual Belief

1.2. An Introspective Belief

2. Fumerton

3. Infallibilism

4. BonJour

5. Fales

3. Mentalism

1. Conee and Feldman

1.1. What is CF-Mentalism?

1.2. Is CF-Mentalism Equivalent to Internalism?

1.3. Is CF-Mentalism True?

1.4. Conclusion on Conee and Feldman

2. Pollock and Cruz

2.1. What is PC-Mentalism?

                        2.2. Is PC-Mentalism Equivalent to Internalism?

2.3. Is PC-Mentalism True?

2.4. Conclusion on Pollock and Cruz

4. Deontologism

1. Subjective and Objective Epistemic Duty

1.1. Deontologism and Objective Duty

1.2. Deontologism and Subjective Duty

2. Ginet’s Argument

2.1. Ginet and Alston

2.2. Another Objection to Ginet’s Argument

3. The Blamelessness Argument

3.1. Blameworthiness, Blamelessness and Justification as Blamelessness

3.2. Some Versions of the Blamelessness Argument

3.3. Why Deontologism Seems Relevant to Internalism

4. Steup’s Arguments

4.1. The Direct Argument

4.2. The Indirect Argument

PART II: DEFENDING EXTERNALISM

5. Proper Function

1. From Evidentialism to Proper Function

1.1. Evidentialism

1.2. The First Improvement: Drop Necessity

1.3. The Second Improvement: Add Proper Function

1.4. The Third Improvement:  Drop Mentalism and Internalism

2. A Proper Function Account of Justification

2.1. An Analysis of Justification

2.2. Virtues of the Analysis

3. Objections

3.1. Proper Function and Naturalism

3.2. The Supervenience Thesis

3.3. Swampman

3.4. Skeptical Scenarios

6. Defeaters

1. Kinds of Defeaters

1.1. Propositional vs. Mental State Defeaters

1.2. Actual vs. Believed Defeaters

2.  No-Defeater Conditions

2.1. Kinds of No-Defeater Condition

2.2. In Defense of the No-Believed-Defeater Condition

3. Objections

3.1. Circularity Problems?

3.2. Necessity Again?

3.3. Fumerton on Conceptual Regresses

3.4. BonJour’s on Quasi-Externalism

7. Epistemic Circularity

1. Epistemic Circularity and the Objection to Externalism

1.1. Epistemic Circularity

1.2. An Objection to Externalism

2. The First Argument in Support of Epistemic Circularity

2.1. In Defense of Foundationalism

2.2. Foundationalism and Epistemic Circularity

2.3. A Dilemma for the Epistemic Circularity Objection to Extenalism

3. The Second Argument in Support of Epistemic Circularity

      4. Why Epistemic Circularity Seems Like a Bad Thing When it Isn’t

4.1. Malignant and Benign Epistemic Circularity

4.2. Why Benign Epistemic Circularity is Ignored

5. Realistic Benign Epistemic Circularity

   8. Responding to Skepticism

         1. The Externalist Response to Skepticism

         2. Non-Externalist Responses to Skepticism

         3. Defending Externalism

3.1. First Complaint: “Uncomfortable Moving Up a Level”

                     3.2. Second Complaint: “Conditional Answer”

                     3.3. Third Complaint: “Anything Goes”

                     3.4. Fourth Complaint: “Philosophically Irresponsible”

                     3.5. The Superiority of Externalism

The goal of this book is to defend externalism about epistemic justification.  The first part of the book is devoted to a careful examination and refutation of externalism’s main competitors.  The aim there is to get the reader to see that these alternatives are dead ends and that the truth lies elsewhere.  This will prepare the reader for Part II of the book where I argue in support of my favored externalist position and respond to some influential objections aimed at externalism generally.

     The most prominent competitor to externalism is internalism, which is the primary focus of Part I.  A crucial ingredient of internalist accounts of justification is the thesis that it is not enough for a belief’s justification that it has some good-making feature; in addition, the person holding the belief must be aware of that good-making feature.  The central point of contention between internalists and externalists is whether there is such an awareness requirement on justification.  

     In the first chapter, after explaining how I’ll be thinking of justification, I present a dilemma for all versions of internalism.  According to that dilemma, the awareness required for justification can be either strong or weak: if strong awareness is required, vicious regress problems arise; but if weak awareness is required, the main motivation for internalism is lost.  Either way we should give up on internalism.  This dilemma is similar to a dilemma proposed by Wilfrid Sellars against foundationalism.  Several internalists have been eager to formulate their internalist views on justification in such a way that the Sellarsian dilemma causes them no trouble.  I argue in Chapter 2 that even views specifically designed to escape the similar-sounding Sellarsian dilemma are unable to escape the dilemma I propose in Chapter 1.

     In Chapter 3, I focus on a view called ‘mentalism’ according to which a belief’s justification supervenes solely on the believer’s mental states in such a way that people who are the same mentally are the same justificationally.  Proponents of this view  typically go on to point out that internalism is equivalent to mentalism, noting that this mentalist account of internalism conflicts with the account of internalism that I endorse in Chapter 1 according to which an essential ingredient of internalist positions is the endorsement of an awareness requirement on justification.  My goal in this chapter is to argue against both the mentalist account of internalism and mentalism itself.  In arguing against the mentalist account of internalism, I accomplish two things: I defend the “awareness requirement” account of internalism on which my Chapter 1 objection to internalism depends; and I argue that, contrary to the standard assumption that the internalism-externalism distinction is exhaustive, mentalism is distinct from both internalism and externalism.  In arguing against mentalism, which is externalism’s other main competitor, I further prepare the way for my Part II arguments in support of externalism. 

     As I already noted, Chapter 1 concludes that internalists are faced either with vicious regress problems or with losing the main motivation for their view.  In Chapter 4 I consider an important alternative motivation for internalism that can be used to replace its main motivation.  That alternative motivation is deontologism, the view that justification should be thought of in terms of concepts like duty, obligation, and blame.  I conclude that there is no good argument from deontologism to internalism.  However, I go on to explain why it is tempting to be misled into thinking there is.

     Having argued against the main competitors to externalism in Part I of the book, I turn in Part II to my arguments in support of externalism.  I begin by defending a particular version of externalism, one according to which the two main requirements on justification are that it satisfies a proper function condition and that it satisfies a no-defeater condition.  In Chapter 5 I suggest three ways to improve an evidentialist account of justification so that it becomes a proper function account of justification, one that differs from Plantinga’s proper function account of warrant in that it imposes no reliability requirement on justified belief.  After defending the proper function requirement in Chapter 5, I turn in Chapter 6 to explaining and then defending the no-defeater requirement on justification.

     I conclude the book by considering two of the most prominent objections to externalism.  In Chapter 7 I examine an objection according to which externalists are committed to approving of epistemic circularity, which is supposed to be a very bad thing for externalism.  I turn that objection on its head, arguing that everyone—or at least everyone who endorses certain very plausible and widely held views on justification—is committed to approving of some kind of epistemic circularity, from which I conclude that epistemic circularity needn’t be a bad thing after all.  And in Chapter 8, I consider the complaint that externalist responses to skepticism are inadequate in various ways.  By way of response, I argue first that opponents of externalism are saddled with the very same problems they attribute to externalists (or to even worse problems).  I conclude by arguing that the alleged problems don’t provide us with a good reason to reject externalism and, moreover, that we have good reason to prefer externalism to nonexternalist theories of justification.