Title

Dilemma for internalism?

School/Department

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Date

6-2010

Abstract

Internalism about epistemic justification (henceforth, 'internalism') says that a belief B is epistemically justified for S only if S is aware of some good-making feature of B, some feature that makes for B's having positive epistemic status: e.g., evidence for B. Externalists with respect to epistemic justification ('externalists') deny this awareness requirement. Michael Bergmann has recently put this dilemma against internalism: awareness admits of a strong and a weak construal; given the strong construal, internalism is subject to debilitating regress troubles; given the weak construal, internalism is unmotivated; either way, internalism is in serious trouble. I argue for two claims in this article. First, Bergmann's dilemma argument is unmotivated: he's given no good reason for accepting one of its crucial premises. And second, Bergmann's dilemma argument is unsound: the crucial premise in question is false.

Keywords

Knowledge, Theory of (Religion); Internalism (Theory of knowledge); Michael Bergmann

Publication Title

Synthese

Volume

174

Issue

3

First Page

355

Last Page

366

DOI of Published Version

10.1007/s11229-009-9457-4

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