Abstract
Several lines of reasoning have been proposed to show the incompatibility of content externalism with justification internalism. In this paper I examine two such lines of reasoning, which both rely on the general idea that since content externalism is incompatible with certain aspects of the alleged privileged character of self-knowledge, it would tend to undermine justification internalism as well. I shall argue that both lines of reasoning, as they stand, lack plausibility, though the core idea of the second line can be reconstructed into a new argument which shows considerable promise. In particular, relying upon the reliability constraint on knowledge, I shall argue that the so-called ‘two-concept’ version of content externalism is incompatible with ‘the transparency of sameness of content’, and thereby would also undermine justification internalism.
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Notes
Notice that this characterization concerns only one of two wide branches of justification internalism, which is sometimes called ‘accessibilism’. According to the other branch, usually called ‘mentalism’, the justificatory status of a subject is completely determined by her occurent and dispositional mental states (see, e.g., Conee and Feldman 2001; Wedgwood 2002). In this paper, I only consider accessibilism, leaving the question of whether mentalism is incompatible with content externalism for a separate examination. For this question and related issues, see, e.g., Conee and Feldman (2004, p. 82), Conee (2007) and Tillman (2012).
See, e.g., Brown (2007). Pryor (2001) calls such a view ‘simple internalism’, and Conee and Feldman (2001) call a rather similar idea ‘accessiblism’. Following Pryor (2001, p. 104), by ‘reflection’ I mean ‘a priori reasoning, introspective awareness of one’s own mental states, and one’s memory of knowledge acquired in those ways’.
As just remarked, by a J-factor I mean a factor which is sufficient, when conjoined with the special access requirement, to render a belief justified, not a factor which only partially contributes to the justification of a belief. Thus, when I characterize JFA as requiring that the subject should have reflective access to “at least one of the J-factors for her belief”, I do not mean that the internalist requirement will be satisfied, according to JFA, when she has reflective access to only one of the factors which partially contributes to the justification of her belief. Of course, being justified in such a circumstance is what justification externalism claims. Rather, the proposed characterization of JFA is simply intended to highlight the natural idea (from the viewpoint of justification internalism) that if there are two independently sufficient grounds for justification, then having reflective access to only one of those grounds will satisfy the internalist requirement. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify this.
There is also another thesis in the vicinity, namely ‘the transparency of difference of content’ (TDC), to which we will return in Sect. 4.
For some sources on the possible bearings of content externalism upon PA see footnote 1. For the incompatibility of (certain versions of) content externalism with TSC, see the references will be cited in footnotes 24 and 30.
The name is due to Vahid (2003a), who proposes an essentially similar argument, though his framing of the argument differs considerably from mine (see Vahid 2003a, pp. 102–104). Notice, moreover, that although Brown’s above-quoted passage concerns SA, her argument can be easily applied in the case of JFA as well. In particular, her talk of ‘the factors which determine whether some of one’s beliefs are justified’ indicates that her line of reasoning is applicable, even more suitably, to JFA.
Notice that the discrimination constraint on knowledge, DCK, cannot prevent these two beliefs from being justified, as DCK is merely a constraint on knowledge, and not on justification.
One may complain that the privileged access argument is problematic as it is not clear which notion of justification appears in P1 and other premises. If it is an internalist notion, then content externalism cannot be freely presupposed by P2. For, it is the very (alleged) conclusion of the argument that justification internalism is incompatible with content externalism. On the other hand, if the relevant premises are to use an externalist notion of justification then P3 would be clearly unwarranted. It seems, however, that an advocate of the privileged access argument will not be moved by this objection, as she can plausibly assume that there is an intuitive single notion of justification which is the subject matter of many epistemological disputes (otherwise these disputes would turn out to be verbal), and it is that very notion which appears in all the relevant premises of the privileged access argument. The argument is intended, therefore, to show that given content externalism, that notion is not conditioned by the reflective accessibility constraint. In fact, the argument can be viewed as somehow analogous to a typical line of reasoning against justification internalism, according to which justification internalism, due to its alleged accessibility constraint, would imply that some intuitively justified beliefs are unjustified. Likewise, here Oscar’s belief that p or q is intuitively justified. But, justification internalism entails, when conjoined with content externalism, that such a belief cannot be justified under the same intuitive notion of justification. I thank an anonymous referee of this journal for pressing me on this issue.
A clarification might be helpful here. When I say that Oscar’s second-order belief that b1 is a belief in his mind does not ascribe any specific content to the subject, I do not mean that b1 lacks any specific content. Of course, b1 does have a specific content, namely: there is some water in the glass (p). Nor do I claim that Oscar’s ability to reflectively demonstrate b1 is not by mediation of its content. Arguably, our reflective access to our occurent intentional states is normally through their contents. My claim, rather, is that when we look at the content of the envisaged second-order belief, namely: b1 is a belief in Oscar’s mind, we see no content ascribed to b1. In other words, the content of b1 (namely: there is some water in the glass) does not appear in the content of this second-order belief. The same is true of Oscar’s other second-order beliefs to the effect that other parts of H obtain. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify this.
Because of space limitations, I do not consider here the so-called ‘illusion version’ of content externalism, according to which in no-reference cases, such as cases where an empty natural kind term is involved, the subject suffers from an illusion of entertaining a thought (see, e.g., Evans 1982; McDowell 1977, 1986). It seems that unlike other versions of content externalism, there is a good argument [namely, ‘the illusion argument’ as it is called by Brown (2004)] for the incompatibility of the illusion view with PA (see Brown 2004; Morvarid 2013). Moreover, and directly relevant to our present concern, I think that the illusion argument can be reconstructed to show that given the illusion view, in some switching scenarios Oscar is not in a position to acquire a priori knowledge that b1 is a belief in his mind, even if both DCK and content essentialism are rejected. I hope elsewhere to explore the bearings of the illusion view on the externalism/internalism debate in epistemology.
Oscar’s example is a case in which one of his beliefs follows from another one in virtue of their logical forms. As an anonymous referee has pointed out, there are also cases where the inferential relationship between two beliefs is not due to their logical form, as when Oscar infers from his belief that water is liquid in the normal temperature the belief that water is not solid in the normal temperature. Let us call these two beliefs d1 and d2, respectively. Here, again, we can plausibly assume that if the subject is in a position to know the sameness of his thought constituents in an a priori manner then he will have a priori access to the fact that the content of d1 entails that of d2, even if he is not in a position to reflectively know, because of the incompatibility of content externalism with PA, what these contents are. For, given that Oscar has grasped, even only partially, the concepts liquid and solid, he is in a position to reflectively know that a thought of the form ‘x is not solid’ can be validly inferred form a thought of the form ‘x is liquid’. Thus, if he can know a priori that the two tokenings of the concept water in d1 and d2 has the same content, then he would be in a position to acquire a priori knowledge that the content of d1 entails that of d2. Therefore, again, his a priori access to the inferential relationship between d1 and d2 hinges upon the transparency of the sameness of content (TSC). I thank an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
See, e.g., Owens (1989), Boghossian (1992), Boghossian (1994), Falvey and Owens (1994), Brown (2004, 2007) and Gerken (2013). As Brown (2004), pp. 165–166) points out, the ‘Mark Twain’–‘Samuel Clemens’ example and the like cannot show that ‘Fregean externalism’ is incompatible with TSC. For, whenever the subject is unaware that ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ are co-referential, she can take different doxastic attitudes toward sentences containing these terms, which means, given Fregean externalism, that she would express different senses by those sentences. Thus, the thought contents she expresses by saying ‘Samuel Clemens is a nice person’ and ‘Mark Twain is a nice person’ will have different contents.
Brown (2007, pp. 22–23) also proposes a related line of argument for a rather different claim that given the ‘two-concept’ construal of switching cases, content externalism undermines TSC, and thereby it would also tend to threaten justification internalism as formulated by AI. This line of reasoning, again, hinges upon a dubious presupposition that a logical entailment can transmit epistemic justification even if the subject is (rationally) doubtful whether that logical entailment holds.
One might also appeal to DCK to show that Oscar’s true beliefs to the effect that his two ‘water’-thoughts have the same content do not constitute instances of knowledge. Remember, nevertheless, that unlike the reliability constraint on knowledge, DCK has been usually rejected on the ground that it poses too strong a condition on knowledge.
As far as I know, the only writers who have come close to, but failed to explicitly express, the idea that the two-concept view undermines not only TDC but also TSC are Goldberg (1999) and Brown (2007). It is noteworthy, however, that while my case concerns a subject, Oscar, who truly believes (but fails to know) that he possesses two thought constituents with the same content, Goldberg’s and Brown’s scenario describes a subject who is doubtful, in the first place, whether her two thought constituents have the same content or not. And precisely because of this aspect of their case, it fails to provide a counterexample to JFA or AI (see footnote 24).
To be clear, I am not appealing here to general principles as to when perceptual appearances can bestow justification upon perceptual beliefs, and when justification can transmit through a logical inference. Rather, I am merely relying on my extensional intuitions to the effect that given the setup of the scenario, Oscar’s belief that p as well as his belief that p or q are both justified. Thus, I need not take any specific position regarding, for example, how perceptual appearances should be individuated, whether a BIV can enjoy the same perceptual appearances with the same justificatory roles as ours, etc. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify this.
I would like to thank Hashem Morvarid, Seyed Mousavian, Amir Saemi, Sajed Tayebi, Hamid Vahid, Mohsen Zamani and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Morvarid, M. A new argument for the incompatibility of content externalism with justification internalism. Synthese 198, 2333–2353 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02208-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02208-7