Content Externalism and the Internalism/ Externalism Debate in Justification Theory

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Content Externalism and the Internalism/ Externalism Debate in Justification Theory"

Transcription

1 Content Externalism and the Internalism/ Externalism Debate in Justification Theory Hamid Vahid While recent debates over content externalism have been mainly concerned with whether it undermines the traditional thesis of privileged self-knowledge, little attention has been paid to what bearing content externalism has on such important controversies as the internalism/externalism debate in epistemology. With a few exceptions, the question has either been treated as a side issue in discussions concerning the implications of content externalism, or has been dealt with in a cursory way in debates over the internalism/externalism distinction in justification theory. In this paper, I begin by considering some of the arguments that have sought to address the question, focusing mainly on Boghossian s pioneering attempt in bringing the issue to the fore. 1 It will be argued that Boghossian s attempt to exploit the alleged non-inferentiality of self-knowledge to show that content externalism and justification internalism are incompatible fails. In the course of this examination, I consider and reject as inadequate some recent responses to Boghossian s argument (due to James Chase 2 ). I then turn to evaluating Chase s own proposed argument to show how content externalism can be brought to bear on the internalism/externalism debate in epistemology, and find it wanting. Finally, having discussed BonJour s terse remarks in this connection, 3 I set out to present, what I take to be, the strongest argument for the incompatibility of content externalism and justification internalism while highlighting the controversial character of one of its main premises. Let us, however, begin by drawing the contours of the debate. 1. Explaining the Incompatibility Thesis According to content externalism facts about social and physical environment affect the individuation conditions of the contents of certain of our thoughts. This means that certain thought contents of an individual fail to supervene on her intrinsic physical properties. The idea has been supported by well-known thought experiments (due to Putnam 4 and Burge 5 ) in which two individuals are assumed to be indiscernible as far as their physical properties are concerned, and yet intuitive reflection reveals that they differ in respects of the contents of certain of their thoughts. So when two physical twins on Earth and Twin Earth (which are identical except that in the latter world the stuff that is called water and falls from their sky and fills their rivers and is phenomenologically indistinguishable European Journal of Philosophy 11:1 ISSN pp Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

2 90 Hamid Vahid from water is composed of XYZ rather than H 2 O) utter the words water is wet, they express different thoughts. Internalism in justification theory, on the other hand, is usually thought of as the view that imposes an accessibility constraint (AC) on justifiers, that is those facts that determine the justificatory status of beliefs. It requires justifiers to be readily accessible (internal) to the subject. (AC) The only facts that qualify as justifiers of a cognizer s believing p at time t are facts that are accessible to him in the sense that he can readily know, at t, whether they obtain. 6 Of course by taking different modes of access (knowledge, justified belief, etc.) into account, we obtain different strengths of (AC) (i.e., strong and weak versions). However, following the lead of those whose views are under consideration here, and also because this is a widely accepted version of internalism, I take access in AC to involve, at least, justified belief. By contrast, externalism denies that justifiers of a belief need be accessible to the cognizer. Reliabilism is a paradigm case of an externalist theory that takes the mere reliability of a belief-forming process (regardless of whether it is internally accessible to the cognizer or not) to be sufficient for the justification of the belief in question. Now the question that arises in this context is whether content externalism is compatible with justification internalism. We shall call the thesis that they are incompatible the incompatibility thesis. As mentioned earlier, the incompatibility thesis has been addressed in different ways by the likes of Boghossian and BonJour, both of whom try to defend it although the thrust of their papers is actually directed at different goals. More recently, James Chase has suggested a new strategy to defend the thesis (though he finally rejects it). In what follows, I shall discuss each of these views in turn before proposing an argument of my own for the incompatibility thesis. I begin by analyzing Boghossian s argument. 2. Boghossian s Non-inferentiality Argument for the Incompatibility Thesis Boghossian s main objective (in the article cited) is to show that content externalism undermines the thesis of privileged self-knowledge. However, an argument for the incompatibility thesis, along the following lines, can be easily constructed out of the claims he advances. Let us call this the non-inferentiality argument. (P) If justification internalism is true then self-knowledge is noninferential. (Q) If self-knowledge is non-inferential then content externalism is false. (C) If justification internalism is true then content externalism is false.

3 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 91 By the non-inferentiality argument, content externalism undermines the internalist conception of justification. The argument is valid, so everything depends on whether the premises are true. Boghossian backs up both premises with arguments which we shall subsequently discuss. Let us start with the argument for (P). Consider two first-order empirical beliefs p and q such that belief p is based on belief q. Boghossian then spells out the following conditions as those that have to be satisfied if I am to be justified (in an internalist sense) in believing that p. (1) I believe that p. (2) I believe that q. (3) The proposition that q justifies the proposition that p. (4) I know that I believe that q. (5) I know that a belief that q justifies a belief that p. (6) I believe that p as a result of the knowledge expressed in 4 and 5. (4) and (5) constitute Boghossian s favored brand of justification internalism requiring the cognizer to know (justifiably believe) that not only the ground of his belief p (namely, the belief q) obtains, but also know (justifiably believe) that the ground is adequate. In connection with the above conditions he makes the following observation. Now, there is, of course, a standard problem in holding that all knowledge of empirical propositions is inferential, that all beliefs can be justified only by reference to other beliefs. This is a problem of the regress of justification: If the belief that p is to count as justified, then the belief that q on which its justification depends must itself be justified. But if all beliefs can be justified only by reference to other beliefs, then the belief q must itself be justified by reference to other beliefs. And this threatens to lapse into a vicious regress. 7 By the standard problem, Boghossian is referring to the problem of the structure of knowledge (justified belief). The problem involves the distinction between inferentially and non-inferentially justified beliefs. To say that a belief p is inferentially justified is to say that it is justified by being inferred from other justified beliefs, say, q and r. But the same question arises for these latter beliefs. Where do they get their justification from? If they, too, are inferentially justified, their justification must derive from still further justified beliefs and we are off on a vicious regress. However, Boghossian goes on to add that there is a special problem sustaining a thoroughly inferential conception of self-knowledge, one that is independent of the standard problem of the regress of justification. 8 To show this he waives the standard problem by not requiring that if a belief, p, is to be justified, then it must rest on another belief, q, that is itself justified, for this would give rise to the regress problem. Rather, he sets his target to be the justification of the belief pyrelative to the belief that q, in accordance with standard internalist requirements. 9 This way, we need not assume that the belief

4 92 Hamid Vahid q is itself justified, thus, neutralizing the regress-generating assumption that All justification is inferential. 10 Now, since our concern here is with knowledge of our own beliefs (selfknowledge 11 ), let us take the belief p to be a shorthand for the second-order belief that I believe that, say, r. Assuming that this second-order belief rests on another belief, say, the belief s, we wish to know what are the conditions that have to be satisfied if I am to be justified (in an internalist sense) in believing that I believe that r. Boghossian spells out the conditions as thus: (1 0 ) I believe that I believe that r. (2 0 ) I believe that s. (3 0 ) The proposition that s justifies the proposition that I believe that r. (4 0 ) I know that I believe that s. (5 0 ) I know that a belief that s justifies the belief that I believe that r. (6 0 ) I believe that I believe that r as a result of knowledge expressed in 4 0 and 5 0. Now, Boghossian claims that there is a special problem with the satisfaction of the above conditions that is independent of the standard problem of the regress of justification. It concerns (4 0 ). In order to know that I believe that r, I must antecedently know that I believe that s. But how was knowledge [justification] of this belief required? On the assumption that all self-knowledge is inferential, it could have been acquired only by inference from yet other known [justified] beliefs. And we are now off on a vicious regress. 12 (my emphasis) To bring the regress to an end, he suggests we should invoke the view that all self-knowledge is non-inferential. We, thus, get the first premise (P) in the argument for the incompatibility thesis: If justification internalism is true then self-knowledge is non-inferential. Before assessing Boghossian s argument, it is instructive to examine a recent critique of the argument (due to Chase); for its failure, as I shall try to show, helps to highlight the substantive issues that Boghossian s argument raises. This will set the stage for a better understanding of where Boghossian s argument for (P) goes wrong. According to Chase although the above argument is supposed to establish (P), all it shows is that, given internalism, it is not the case that all self-knowledge is inferential. The point is obvious enough. If a chain of justified beliefs is to come to an end, then the chain naturally includes both inferential and non-inferential beliefs. Thus, to bring the regress generated by (4 ) to an end, we are only entitled to the conclusion that some self-knowledge is non-inferential. To reinforce this conclusion Chase adds the following remarks. Suppose we follow Chisholm and adopt a foundationalist account of the structure of our justified beliefs where justification is construed internalistically. Then the basic or self-presenting beliefs that play the role of foundations in our belief structure are not inferentially justified. If this is the case, then Boghossian s argument for (P) would fail to go

5 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 93 through, says Chase, because the regress automatically ends once we reach the foundational beliefs. These beliefs, he says, will not include all cases of selfknowledgey[they] might only include beliefs about sense-data (or sensoryinformation), experiences of pain and so on. 13 But there seems to be some confusion here. As his examples show, Chase s foundational and self-presenting beliefs seem to consist only of first-order beliefs whereas Boghossian is concerned with second-order beliefs when he concludes that not all self-knowledge is inferential. Moreover, Boghossian s way of bringing the regress (generated by (4 )) to an end is precisely to adopt a foundationalist strategy where some justified second-order beliefs are assumed to be noninferential. And, to be fair to Boghossian, he does not really conclude from his regress argument that all self-knowledge is non-inferential. What he says is, rather, this: [I]t emerges very clearly that not all knowledge of one s beliefs can be inferential. On pain of a vicious regress, it must be possible to know the content of some mental states non-inferentially. 14 It is, however, true, as Chase observes, that Boghossian often opts for the position that all self-knowledge is non-inferential. I shall later explain why Boghossian wavers between the two positions. In any case, I do not think that Chase really puts his finger on where Boghossian s argument goes wrong. The trouble with Boghossian s argument, I think, runs deeper than a mere disagreement over the scope of non-inferential character of self-knowledge. Rather, it seems to me that his argument fails to show either that all or some self-knowledge is non-inferential. Let me explain. Recall that to separate what he calls the special problem sustaining a thoroughly inferential conception of self-knowledge from the standard problem of the regress of justification, Boghossian chooses to waive the standard problem by requiring only that the belief p be justified relative to the belief that q. To repeat, the standard problem of the regress of justification arises when we assume that every justified belief could be justified only by inferring it from some other justified belief, or, more simply put, by assuming that all justification is inferential. However, once we choose to focus on the justification of, say, belief p relative to the belief q, we no longer need to suppose that the belief q itself is justified, and, thus, the threat of the (standard) problem of the regress of justification would not arise. In so doing we are, in effect, neutralizing the assumption that all justification (of first-order beliefs) is inferential. Now where the subject matter of our concern is knowledge of one s own beliefs, the belief p, as noted, will stand for the belief that I believe, say, r, and this second-order belief is supposedly based on, say, the belief s. Accordingly, adopting Boghossian s strategy in this case means that we should require only that the belief that I believe that r be justified relative to the belief that s, thus neutralizing the assumption that all justification of second-order beliefs i.e., all self-knowledge is inferential. But if waiving the standard regress problem is what Boghossian is asking us to do in order to highlight the special problem sustaining a thoroughly inferential conception of self-knowledge, then he can no longer appeal to the assumption that all self-knowledge is inferential to allow (4 ) generate a vicious regress. Given the relativization requirement, which

6 94 Hamid Vahid effectively neutralizes this assumption, he can no longer say of the (second-order) knowledge (justified belief) expressed by (4 ) that on the assumption that all selfknowledge is inferential, it could have been acquired only by inference from yet other known [justified] beliefs. And now we are off on a vicious regress. Boghossian s argument for (P) is thus blocked. So I conclude that Boghossian s failure to establish (P) is not because his argument entitles him only to the conclusion that only some self-knowledge is non-inferential, but because his argument for (P) does not even get off the ground once it is decided to waive the standard problem of the regress of justification by relativizing the justification of one belief to another. The preceding remarks can also explain why Boghossian wavers between the two positions expressed by propositions All self-knowledge is non-inferential and Some self-knowledge is non-inferential. The latter is an obvious offshoot of his foundationalist solution to the regress of justification problem. For on a foundationalist solution to the problem, one has to assume that in tracing back the chain of inferentially justified beliefs, we arrive at one or more non-inferentially justified (second-order) beliefs that terminates the regress, and in a way which avoids circularity. Thus, in bringing the regress to an end in the above manner, one has to acknowledge, naturally enough, that the chain includes both instances of inferential and noninferential self-knowledge as its members. On the other hand, when reflecting on the differences between the ways in which one comes to know one s own thoughts and the thought of others, he is propelled to the former position. Another reason for Boghossian s wavering attitude might be the fact that he uses indirectly and inferentially interchangeably as the following quote clearly demonstrates: In the case of others, I have no choice but to infer what they think from observation about what they do or say. In my own case, by contrast, inference is neither required nor relevantyi know what I think directly. 15 But these two notions are not identical. Not every instance of indirect knowledge (justification) is inferential. When construing self-knowledge as a species of direct knowledge, epistemologists do not generally have in mind a lack of spatial or causal link between the knower and the known. The term is rather used in an epistemic sense meaning that direct knowledge (justification) is a species of knowledge that is not based on another piece of knowledge (justification). On the other hand, some indirect perceptual beliefs that we acquire are not obtained through inference from some other set of beliefs. We are usually unaware of such inferences and may not even be able to reconstruct such inferences because it is often difficult to form beliefs about how things appear to us in perception. 16 The preceding diagnosis of Boghossian s argument also shows that, on his way of setting up the problem, it is actually the regress-of-justification problem (now involving second-order beliefs) that is doing all the work and not the internalist conception of justification. 17 In fact, given certain assumptions, we may derive the conclusion that some self-knowledge is non-inferential by applying the standard regress argument to justified second-order beliefs without presupposing either an internalist or externalist conception of justification. If the justification of all first-order or second-order beliefs is assumed to be inferential,

7 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 95 then we have two main options at our disposal in order to deal with the generated regress. We can either adopt a foundationalist stance by ruling that some first-order or second-order beliefs are non-inferentially justified, or we can opt for a circle and then switch from local to holistic coherentism. Either way, this means that it is our ways of handling the regress problem, rather than anything to do with internalist/externalist conceptions of justification, that are brought to bear on the question of whether or not justification (of first-order or second-order beliefs) is inferential. Let us now turn to Boghossian s argument for (Q), namely, the claim that if self-knowledge is non-inferential then content externalism is false. Following Burge s lead, Boghossian s argument for (Q) is really aimed at showing that externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge, and it is generally known as the slow switching argument. I shall return to this argument later on in this paper. However, it is easily possible to take it as supporting (Q) because privileged self-knowledge is often viewed as a species of direct knowledge. To explain the switching argument, let us recall our scenario about the two identical planets Earth and Twin Earth. Suppose now an inhabitant of Earth, Oscar, unknowingly is switched back and forth between Earth and Twin Earth, remaining on each planet long enough to acquire the concepts appropriate to the respective environments. Suppose further that Oscar is now back on Earth expressing the thought that water is wet. Does he know that he is thinking that water is wet? According to the relevant alternatives theory of knowledge, to know the content of his thought Oscar must be able to rule out the relevant alternative that he is thinking about twater. ( Twater is the translation of what Twin Earthians call water in our language.) But doing so requires him to investigate his environment first in order to find out what he thinks. And this would undermine the privileged character of self-knowledge, according to which we know the contents of our thoughts in an a priori manner without the benefit of empirical investigation. Boghossian further concludes that [i]t would seem to follow, therefore, that I could not know the contents of my thought purely observationally: I would have to infer what I think from facts about my environment. 18 This seems to give us (Q): If self-knowledge is non-inferential then content externalism is false. As with Boghossian s argument for (P), Chase has also reacted to this argument. In order to gain a better understanding of the argument s import, it would be helpful, I believe, to begin by assessing that response. To begin with, when describing Boghossian s argument for (Q), Chase tends to misrepresent it. He attributes views to Boghossian that are, on the face of it, contradictory: Boghossian thinks [Oscar] cannot do this [namely, rule out the relevant alternative that he is thinking about twater] by assumption, he does not know that this relevant alternative exists, because he is unaware of the switching going on but this is by the way for our purposes. 19 However, having said this, he immediately says of Oscar s knowledge of the content of his belief water is wet that this is a case of self-knowledge that can only occur

8 96 Hamid Vahid inferentially, since for it to count as knowledge an alternative must somehow be excluded by [Oscar]. 20 But this is confusing. For if he takes Boghossian as thinking that Oscar cannot rule out the relevant alternative that he is thinking about twater, then how can it be expected that the alternative must somehow be excluded by [Oscar]? The trouble is that Boghossian never says that Oscar cannot rule out the relevant alternative because he is unaware that he is switched back and forth between Earth and Twin Earth. The idea behind the switching argument is not that Oscar cannot know he is thinking about water because he cannot rule out the relevant alternative that he is thinking about twater. The moral is rather that, being unaware of the switching going on, to know the contents of his thoughts Oscar has to investigate his environment first, something that would undermine the a priori character of privileged self-knowledge. Moreover, Chase seems to be operating with a wrong conception of what makes an alternative relevant. This is evident from the way he chooses to describe the slow switching argument. Boghossian argues that to know that his thought was Twater is wet, [Oscar] must be able to exclude the relevant alternative that his thought was Water is wet. (Boghossian thinks [Oscar] cannot do this by assumption, he does not know that this relevant alternative existsy.) 21 But Boghossian himself is quite clear on this point: Epistemic relevance is not a subjective concept. Someone may not be aware that there is a lot of counterfeit money in his vicinity; but if there is, the hypothesis that the dime-looking object in his hand is counterfeit needs to be excluded before he can be said to know that it is a dime. 22 I conclude, therefore, that Chase misconstrues Boghossian s slow switching argument. He goes on to say, however, that, despite Boghossian s failure to establish (P), one can still present the following qualified version of Boghossian s argument for the incompatibility thesis. Recall that, according to Chase, given justification internalism, Boghossian s argument for (P), at most, gives us the conclusion that some self-knowledge is non-inferential. This provides the basis for a qualified version of the incompatibility argument. (P 0 ) If justification internalism is true then some self-knowledge is noninferential. (Q 0 ) If some self-knowledge is non-inferential then content externalism is false. (C) If justification internalism is true then content externalism is false. Chase s reaction to this argument consists in denying (Q 0 ), because content externalism does not entail that all self-knowledge is inferential. The latter is true if all instances of self-knowledge involve wide content concepts. But, Chase says, Twin Earth cases only show that some, rather than all, concepts are widey [So] [b]eing committed to the claim that some instances of self-knowledge involve

9 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 97 only narrow content concepts is not being committed to much. 23 Chase concludes that Boghossian has failed to show that justification internalism is incompatible with content externalism. There are, however, a number of problems with Chase s treatment of the qualified version of Boghossian s incompatibility argument. To begin with, in order to be able to construct this version of the argument, he needs to show that the class of the instances of non-inferential self-knowledge whose existence he takes to follow from Boghossian s argument for (P 0 ) coincides with the class of the instances of non-inferential self-knowledge that, he says, only involve narrow content concepts. However, even granting that Boghossian s regress argument establishes, at least, (P 0 ), there is no indication that instances of non-inferential self-knowledge whose existence is supposedly acknowledged by the argument all involve narrow content concepts. Moreover, pace Chase s claim, Boghossian himself is quite aware that Twin Earth cases only show that some concepts are wide: The commitment to relationism is evident, of course, in wide or anti-individualistic conception of thought content. According to such views, many of a person s thought contents are necessarily dependent on relations that the person bears to the physical or, in some cases, social environment. The view is supported by a series of now-famous thought experiments. 24 I take the preceding remarks as showing that Chase fails to address the substantial issues that Boghossian s argument from non-inferentiality of self-knowledge raises. My own assessment of the incompatibility argument is, by now, quite clear. It fails because Boghossian s argument for (P) is seriously flawed. It neither delivers (P) nor (P 0 ). Moreover, in putting forward the slow switching argument, Boghossian tends to represent the relevant alternatives theory as requiring the cognizer to undergo a process of reasoning and inference to exclude the relevant alternatives in order to be able to claim to know a proposition: S has to be able to exclude the possibility that his thought involved the concept arthritis rather than the concept tharthritis before he can be said to know what his thought is. But this means that he has to reason his way to a conclusion about his thought. 25 But this activity of reasoning or inferring is not essential to the relevant alternatives theory which is actually characterized by the satisfaction of certain counterfactuals: [A] true belief (p) fails to be knowledge if there are any relevant alternative situations in which the proposition p would be false, but the process used would cause S to believe p anyway. 26 If this happens to be the case, then the utilized process fails to discriminate the truth of p from those alternatives, and the subject would fail to know p. Misrepresenting the relevant alternatives theory weakens, to some extent, the force of the slow switching argument to support (Q). Nevertheless, I think, there are certain intuitions that one can preserve from Boghossian s failed attempt in order to erect a new argument for the incompatibility thesis. However, before presenting this argument, I wish to examine an argument for the incompatibility of justification internalism and content externalism that has been suggested by Chase (though he finally rejects it).

10 98 Hamid Vahid 3. The Process Argument for the Incompatibility Thesis Chase first defines a perspective as the kind of things that are internally available to an agent (beliefs, occurrent experiences, etc.). Then he suggests two ways of spelling out justification internalism: Psychological Internalism (J-Int 1 ) and Constitution Internalism (J-Int 2 ). 27 (J-Int 1 ) For all agents a 1 and a 2 and worlds w 1 and w 2,ifa 1 in w 1 and a 2 in w 2 are identical in their perspective, then a 1 and a 2 are identical in all respects relevant to the justification of their beliefs. (J-Int 2 ) For all agents a 1 and a 2 and worlds w 1 and w 2,ifa 1 in w 1 and a 2 in w 2 are identical in their internal physical constitution on which their minds supervene, then a 1 and a 2 are identical in all respects relevant to the justification of their beliefs. Chase, however, notes that Constitution Internalism is hardly what people have in mind when talking about justification internalism: no J-internalist that I know has explicitly adopted it. 28 Justification internalism is thought to be equivalent to the disjunction of (J-Int 1 ) and (J-Int 2 ). So if they can be both shown to be incompatible with content externalism, then we have an argument for the incompatibility thesis. Chase then adds the following peculiar remark: My claim is that suspicions of incompatibility between justification internalism and content externalism are based on treating (J-Int 2 ) as representative of justification internalism. 29 But one wonders if, as in Chase s own words, no justification internalistyhas explicitly adopted [J-Int 2 ], how could it possibly be treated as a representative of justification internalism? However, let us not dwell over these cryptic remarks and, instead, see what sort of argument Chase tries to concoct out of these claims. To complete the argument for the incompatibility thesis (which he calls the process argument ), Chase makes the following claim (PC) about justificatory processes that he defines as belief-forming processes that [are] especially relevant to the justification of output beliefs. 30 (PC) For all agents a 1 and a 2 and worlds w 1 and w 2,ifa 1 in w 1 and a 2 in w 2 are identical in all respects relevant to the justification of their beliefs, and both believe that p, then the justificatory process leading to a 1 s belief that p is identical to the justificatory process leading to a 2 s belief that p. (PC) is coupled with what he calls a natural assumption according to which the justificatory process leading to a belief is a respect relevant to the justification of a belief. The process argument would then take the following form. 31 (A1) If (PC) is false then (J-Int 2 ) is false. (A2) If content externalism is true then (PC) is false. (C) If content externalism is true then (J-Int 2 ) is false.

11 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 99 I am not going to examine the process argument in great detail as it seems to me that its shortcomings are actually symptomatic of the questionable nature of its underlying assumptions. So before turning to assessing these assumptions, I shall briefly consider some of the reasons that Chase adduces in support of the premises of the process argument. Let us start with his argument for (A1) (or, rather, its contraposed form). Suppose, he says, (J-Int 2 ) is true, then two agents who have identical physical constitution will be identical vis-à-vis all the respects relevant to the justification of their beliefs. But, by the natural assumption, justificatory processes leading to beliefs are aspects relevant to their justification. So, assuming that the two agents share the same belief, (PC) follows directly from (J-Int 2 ). However, valid as this argument might be, (J-Int 2 ) does not seem to be doing any real work. Rather, the burden of the argument seems to be carried by the so-called natural assumption. What it says is that justificatory processes that result in a belief are relevant to its justification. Now add to this the antecedent of (PC) according to which two individuals are identical in all justificatory respects in regard to their beliefs and happen to share a belief p. The consequent of (PC) follows immediately without any appeal being made to (J-Int 2 ). 32 This greatly upsets the process argument for by depriving the argument from its first premise (A1), the incompatibility conclusion (C) can no longer be derived. Moreover, the fact that the natural assumption is sufficient on its own to entail (PC) also undermines the premise (A2) of the argument. Let us then suppose that the natural assumption entails (PC). This means that if the natural assumption is true so is (PC), or, in its contraposed form, if (PC) is false so is the natural assumption. Now what (A2) says is that if content externalism is true then (PC) is false. From (A2) and the above supposition it follows that if content externalism is true then the natural assumption is false. But this is unacceptable. One can be a content externalist and, at the same time, embrace the natural assumption (e.g., be a reliabilist) i.e, believe that justificatory processes that result in beliefs are relevant to their justification. This means that (A2) is no necessary truth. The process argument is, thus, in deep trouble. Its main problem, I think, has to do with some of its underlying assumptions. I shall briefly touch on some of the relevant issues. Consider first Chase s natural assumption. He holds a rather peculiar attitude towards this claim. Initially, as its name also indicates, he regards it as a plausible enough claim but, in the end, goes on to reject it because he denies that justificatory processes can plausibly be individuated by narrow content alone without invoking wide content: For if justification internalism is right then the factors which are relevant to the justification of beliefs are internally available to the agent, and a wide-content individuable process is not internally available in this way. 33 One wonders how a natural and plausible enough assumption can be so easily dismissed. I think the reason has to do with the sketchy manner in which the assumption has been formulated and introduced. To begin with, it initially strikes one as being analytically true. For what it says is that the justificatory process leading to a belief is relevant to the justification of that belief. But Chase had already defined justificatory processes as belief-forming

12 100 Hamid Vahid processes that [are] relevant to the justification of output beliefs. So what the natural assumption says is analytically true! Perhaps (PC) is only intended to say that the processes that lead to beliefs are relevant to their justification. But one needs to know what it is in virtue of which that belief-forming processes are justificatorily relevant as this statement means different things to different people. One plausible thought would be to say that it is by virtue of being the cause of a belief that such processes are justificatorily relevant. However, this response may not be acceptable to a justification internalist. So one needs to state very clearly the import of the natural assumption before exploiting it in an argument for the incompatibility of justification internalism and content externalism. More fundamentally, Chase says very little as to why his two brands of internalism (Psychological and Constitution internalism) are really varieties of justification internalism. He merely says, that any justification internalist needs to give some account of what it is for something to be internally available to the agent. 34 However, instead of giving an account of what internal availability consists in, he proceeds to give a list of the things that are generally thought to be internally available to an agent: beliefs, experiences, etc. (which he refers to as making the agent s perspective). Moreover, as explained earlier, what characterizes justification internalism is an accessibility constraint (AC) that it imposes on beliefs justifiers. It is only qua justifiers that Chase s list of internally available items become relevant to an internalist conception of justification. It is, therefore, necessary to see if (AC) is satisfied in the case of Chase s brands of justification internalism. To see this, let construe both (J-Int 1 ) and (J-Int 2 ) as supervenience theses. Accordingly, what (J-Int 1 ) actually says is that respects relevant to the justification of cognizers beliefs supervene on their perspectives. Let us grant that the subvening base (beliefs, experiences, etc.) is, by definition, cognitively accessible to the cognizers. However, it does not follow that what supervenes on them i.e., respects relevant to the justification of their beliefs are equally accessible to the agents, and, thus, there is no reason why (J-Int 1 ) satisfies (AC). The situation is even worse with respect to (J-Int 2 ) which says, roughly, that respects relevant to the justification of beliefs supervene on agents internal physical constitution, as in this case even the subvening base fails to be cognitively accessible to the agent. I conclude, therefore that, given the problematic nature of these assumptions as well as the defective structure of the process argument, Chase fails to present a strong case for the incompatibility thesis. 35 In the remainder of this paper, I shall try to put forward a new argument for the incompatibility thesis drawing on some of the intuitions that lie behind the failed attempts we have already discussed. 4. The Privileged Access Argument for the Incompatibility Thesis The argument that I am going to submit will principally draw on the recent controversy concerning the possible bearing of content externalism on the alleged

13 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 101 privileged character of self-knowledge. By way of setting the stage for presenting the argument, it will be helpful to consider briefly some terse remarks that BonJour has made in this connection which focuses on the accessibility of content. Here is all he says in defense of the incompatibility thesis: The adoption of an externalist account of mental content would seem to support an externalist account of justification in the following way: if part or all of the content of a belief is inaccessible to the believer, then both the justifying status of other beliefs in relation to that content and the status of that content as justifying further beliefs will be similarly inaccessible, thus contradicting the internalist requirements for justification. 36 BonJour s compressed remarks are made in the context of clarifying the internalist/externalist divide in justification theory, and they clearly need clarification. To elaborate, consider an example (due to Chase) in which an agent S holds a belief A which he would express in the words Water is the stuff usually found in lakes. Let us assume that the content of A is wide. Suppose further that A is used as part of the justification of another belief of S, namely B, There is water in front of me. By hypothesis S cannot, on reflection, gain access to the full content of A. Given these assumptions, BonJour seems to be claiming that since not all factors that enter into the justification of B are internally accessible to S, then content externalism and justification internalism are incompatible. Responding to this argument, Chase has charged BonJour with equivocating in regard to the notion of accessibility. This is a bold claim, especially as Chase himself does not elaborate on what this notion consists in. Instead he presents a case which, he thinks, illustrates that, pace BonJour, the purported justification relations in which A stands to B are not factors relevant to the justification of S s belief B. The case is one where our agent S is, in fact, the victim of an evil demon with experiences that are phenomenologically indistinguishable from those he would have under normal circumstances. So let us assume that S forms the belief B (on the basis of his visual experiences) and belief A except that this time B is false. According to Chase [i]f we suppose that water is a wide content concept, then S is in the [same] situation [as in the previous case], and will be unable to individuate her belief A and therefore is unable to individuate the justification relations A stands in to B. 37 But, he claims, S is nevertheless justified in holding B under such circumstances and so [t]he lesson for the justification internalistyis that the justification relations A stands in to B are not factors relevant to the justification of S s belief B. 38 The above response to BonJour, however, rests on two questionable suppositions. First, assuming that water is a wide content concept, Chase claims that S is in identical positions vis-à-vis the individuation conditions of the contents of her beliefs in both the normal and the demon scenarios. But this is unwarranted without further elaboration of what content externalism really implies, especially in cases of reference failure, as in the demon scenario, when,

14 102 Hamid Vahid for example, the cognizer says There is water in front of me. 39 Certain content externalists would be inclined to say that, if water is a natural kind, then S, being a victim of the demon, is not expressing the concept of water. (It is, however, consistent with content externalism that S s concept of water in the demon scenario has exactly the same narrow conceptual role as S s concept of water under ordinary circumstances.) There are also variants of externalist views according to which the objects of a belief are taken to be the causes of that belief. 40 This requires us to interpret the utterances of the inhabitants of a demon world or a vat world as referring to, say, the brain s computer environment regardless of the experiences it might have. So it is by no means clear that as far as the contents of her beliefs are concerned, our agent S is in the same situation in both the normal and demon scenarios. Another problematic step in Chase s argument is to treat the justification of S s beliefs in the normal and demon scenarios similarly. There is, surely, a strong temptation to take S in the demon world as having justified perceptual beliefs despite these beliefs being invariably false. This is, however, incompatible with a truth-conducive e.g, a reliabilist account of justification that takes the reliability of belief-forming processes to underwrite the justification of the resulting beliefs. One strategy that the proponents of the truth-conducive or veritistic conception of justification tend to adopt in the face of the epistemic status of beliefs in the demon world is to invoke a deontological conception of justification according to which a belief is justified if it is formed in a faultless, blameless and non-culpable manner. Such an agent can hardly be faulted for forming the beliefs in question for she has not been epistemically negligent. The idea is to highlight the agent s perspective on the world and see if she has behaved responsibly vis-à-vis her intellectual duties. Goldman, to cite one proponent of such an approach, has coined this conception of justification weak justification to contrast it with another sense of justification, strong justification, when beliefs are reliably produced or adequately grounded. 41 He thinks each of these concepts is legitimate. In any case, on such accounts the agent s beliefs in the demon world are only weakly, not strongly, justified. In the light of the above remarks, I take Chase s response to be too quick to be effective against BonJour s argument. I think a more charitable understanding of BonJour s remarks can be obtained if they are seen in the light of the recent controversy over the possible bearing of content externalism on the thesis of privileged self-knowledge. What BonJour seems to be saying is that if the content of a belief A is not accessible to a cognizer, then it cannot play the role of a justifier for another belief B. For if the cognizer is to be justified (in an internalist sense) in believing B, she must know (by reflection alone) whether the ground of that belief obtains. Now if, as content externalism seems to imply, knowing the content of a belief requires empirical investigation, then this means that the justifying factors of the cognizer s beliefs are not internally (i.e., reflectively) available to her. This means that content externalism and justification internalism are incompatible. We are now in a position to present our argument from privileged access for the incompatibility thesis. It should be noted that I am using knowledge, as in

15 Content Externalism and the Internalism/Externalism Debate 103 self-knowledge, not in the sense of merely having a true belief about the contents of our thoughts. I use it, rather, as, at least, having a justified belief about those contents. The argument consists of the following steps. (E) Justification internalism presupposes self-knowledge. (F) Self-knowledge is epistemically privileged. (G) Content externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge. (C) Justification internalism is incompatible with content externalism. Each of the above steps obviously needs to be substantiated. The argument for (E) is rather straightforward. I have already characterized justification internalism by the accessibility constraint (AC) on the justifiers of one s beliefs. It requires them to be readily knowable to the agent. Accordingly, the justifiers of a cognizer s belief p at time t are those facts that she is capable of knowing reflectively, at that time, whether they hold. Thus, if justifiers are themselves beliefs, knowing whether they hold and bear the appropriate epistemic relation to the target belief would, ipso facto, require knowing their contents. So justification internalism presupposes selfknowledge. This is especially clear in the case of the strong form of justification internalism that Boghossian, claiming to be following BonJour, seems to advocate. Suppose belief p depends on belief q, then [a]ccording to internalism, if I am to be justified in believing that p, I must believe that p as a result of both of my recognition [knowledge] that I believe that q, and that a belief that q justifies a belief that p. 42 Thus, justification internalism requires the cognizer to know (or, at least, justifiably believe) the contents of her beliefs justifiers. 43 Now for the truth of (F). Since (F) is widely assumed to be obvious, I do not think that it really needs an argument. At least, this is how it is thought of by almost all those who have addressed the question of the compatibility of content externalism and privileged self-knowledge in print. In the case of the knowledge of empirical facts or the thoughts of others, we have to embark on empirical investigation of our environment and the behavior of people. But in the case of knowledge of the contents of our own thoughts beliefs, desires, etc. this is obtained independently of any empirical investigation. So the idea is that we have a privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. The idea is not that such a knowledge is incorrigible. Rather, the claim is that we are able to know, without the benefit of empirical investigation, what our thoughts are in our own case. 44 So the general consensus is that privileged self-knowledge (access) has a broadly a priori character. Here is a typical statement of privileged selfknowledge, which in conformity with our understanding of knowledge, is couched in terms of justification. (PS) It is conceptually necessary that if we are able to exercise our actual normal capacity to have beliefs about our occurrent thoughts, then if we are able to occurrently think that p, we are able to know that we are thinking that p without our knowledge being justificatorily based on empirical investigation of our environment. 45

16 104 Hamid Vahid I take it that the preceding remarks establish both the premises (E) and (F) of our incompatibility argument. The argument is also valid, so everything hangs on the premise (G). Is it true? Well, there are currently two lines of thought to show that content externalism undermines the traditional doctrine according to which we enjoy a privileged access to our intentional states. The first line of argument, due to McKinsey, seeks to show that the combined theses of content externalism and privileged self-knowledge provide a non-empirical route to knowledge of empirical facts which is clearly absurd. 46 The second line of argument (mainly due to Boghossian) is what we have already become familiar with under the title of slow switching argument. It claims to show that if externalism is true, then one could discover the contents of one s thoughts only after investigating the physical and/or social environment in which one exists. So the case for (G) seems quite strong. And given the ongoing debate over this subject, it does not look as if the question of the compatibility of content externalism and privileged self-knowledge would admit of easy or straightforward solutions. To give one example, I shall consider and reject a proposed solution to the slow switching argument that has more or less attained the status of an orthodoxy in the face of such skeptical claims as (F). Our discussion will also reinforce the conclusions reached in the later parts of section 2. Let us begin by emphasizing, once again, what the switching argument really involves. The question it seeks to address is not so much about whether there is an entailment relation between the theses of content externalism and content skepticism as about whether the traditional doctrine of privileged self-knowledge is flawed. As we saw, self-knowledge is understood as involving some sort of privileged access to the contents of one s thoughts in the sense that the justification of the resulting second-order beliefs obtain independently of sense experience. But the switching cases are precisely cases where the justificationconferring grounds appear to involve experience and this undermines the privileged status of self-knowledge. A widely discussed response (initiated by Burge) holds that content externalism leaves the privileged character of selfknowledge intact. This is because, according to this view, the contents of our second-order thoughts are determined by the contents of our first-order thoughts, and since, according to content externalism, the latter is environmentally determined, our second-order thoughts turn out to be about the very same objects that our first-order thoughts are. So Oscar cannot be wrong about the contents of his first-order thoughts, and there is no need for him to consult his environment. 47 The main problem with this response is that although it makes the cognizer always right about what he thinks, it does not allow us to attribute knowledge (justified belief) to him. For the question is not whether we have a true belief about the contents of our thoughts but a justified one. After all, one can have an infallible belief but not be justified in holding it. One needs more powerful reasons in order to undermine the arguments proposed for (G). To conclude, we started by examining Boghossian s argument from the noninferential character of self-knowledge for the incompatibility of content externalism and justification internalism and found it wanting. In the course of

Deontological Perspectivism: A Reply to Lockie Hamid Vahid, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran

Deontological Perspectivism: A Reply to Lockie Hamid Vahid, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran Deontological Perspectivism: A Reply to Lockie Hamid Vahid, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran Abstract In his (2015) paper, Robert Lockie seeks to add a contextualized, relativist

More information

Skepticism and Internalism

Skepticism and Internalism Skepticism and Internalism John Greco Abstract: This paper explores a familiar skeptical problematic and considers some strategies for responding to it. Section 1 reconstructs and disambiguates the skeptical

More information

Can A Priori Justified Belief Be Extended Through Deduction? It is often assumed that if one deduces some proposition p from some premises

Can A Priori Justified Belief Be Extended Through Deduction? It is often assumed that if one deduces some proposition p from some premises Can A Priori Justified Belief Be Extended Through Deduction? Introduction It is often assumed that if one deduces some proposition p from some premises which one knows a priori, in a series of individually

More information

Received: 30 August 2007 / Accepted: 16 November 2007 / Published online: 28 December 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Received: 30 August 2007 / Accepted: 16 November 2007 / Published online: 28 December 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Acta anal. (2007) 22:267 279 DOI 10.1007/s12136-007-0012-y What Is Entitlement? Albert Casullo Received: 30 August 2007 / Accepted: 16 November 2007 / Published online: 28 December 2007 # Springer Science

More information

JUSTIFICATION INTERNALISM, SELF KNOWLEDGE, AND MENTAL CONTENT EXTERNALISM. By Amber Ross. Chapel Hill 2006

JUSTIFICATION INTERNALISM, SELF KNOWLEDGE, AND MENTAL CONTENT EXTERNALISM. By Amber Ross. Chapel Hill 2006 JUSTIFICATION INTERNALISM, SELF KNOWLEDGE, AND MENTAL CONTENT EXTERNALISM By Amber Ross A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the

More information

In Defense of Radical Empiricism. Joseph Benjamin Riegel. Chapel Hill 2006

In Defense of Radical Empiricism. Joseph Benjamin Riegel. Chapel Hill 2006 In Defense of Radical Empiricism Joseph Benjamin Riegel A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

More information

Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism. BY TED POSTON (Basingstoke,

Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism. BY TED POSTON (Basingstoke, Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism. BY TED POSTON (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 208. Price 60.) In this interesting book, Ted Poston delivers an original and

More information

This is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished papers on the fit

This is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished papers on the fit Published online at Essays in Philosophy 7 (2005) Murphy, Page 1 of 9 REVIEW OF NEW ESSAYS ON SEMANTIC EXTERNALISM AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE, ED. SUSANA NUCCETELLI. CAMBRIDGE, MA: THE MIT PRESS. 2003. 317 PAGES.

More information

Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Transmission of Warrant

Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Transmission of Warrant In M.J. Frápolli and E. Romero (eds), Meaning, Basic Self-Knowledge, and Mind: Essays on Tyler Burge (Stanford: CSLI Publications), 99 124. Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Transmission of Warrant Martin

More information

Semantic Externalism, by Jesper Kallestrup. London: Routledge, 2012, x+271 pages, ISBN (pbk).

Semantic Externalism, by Jesper Kallestrup. London: Routledge, 2012, x+271 pages, ISBN (pbk). 131 are those electrical stimulations, given that they are the ones causing these experiences. So when the experience presents that there is a red, round object causing this very experience, then that

More information

A Review of Neil Feit s Belief about the Self

A Review of Neil Feit s Belief about the Self A Review of Neil Feit s Belief about the Self Stephan Torre 1 Neil Feit. Belief about the Self. Oxford GB: Oxford University Press 2008. 216 pages. Belief about the Self is a clearly written, engaging

More information

PHL340 Handout 8: Evaluating Dogmatism

PHL340 Handout 8: Evaluating Dogmatism PHL340 Handout 8: Evaluating Dogmatism 1 Dogmatism Last class we looked at Jim Pryor s paper on dogmatism about perceptual justification (for background on the notion of justification, see the handout

More information

Is Klein an infinitist about doxastic justification?

Is Klein an infinitist about doxastic justification? Philos Stud (2007) 134:19 24 DOI 10.1007/s11098-006-9016-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Is Klein an infinitist about doxastic justification? Michael Bergmann Published online: 7 March 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business

More information

Knowledge and its Limits, by Timothy Williamson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp. xi

Knowledge and its Limits, by Timothy Williamson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp. xi 1 Knowledge and its Limits, by Timothy Williamson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 332. Review by Richard Foley Knowledge and Its Limits is a magnificent book that is certain to be influential

More information

Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument by Michael Huemer (2000)

Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument by Michael Huemer (2000) Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument by Michael Huemer (2000) One of the advantages traditionally claimed for direct realist theories of perception over indirect realist theories is that the

More information

Varieties of Apriority

Varieties of Apriority S E V E N T H E X C U R S U S Varieties of Apriority T he notions of a priori knowledge and justification play a central role in this work. There are many ways in which one can understand the a priori,

More information

Philosophy 5340 Epistemology. Topic 6: Theories of Justification: Foundationalism versus Coherentism. Part 2: Susan Haack s Foundherentist Approach

Philosophy 5340 Epistemology. Topic 6: Theories of Justification: Foundationalism versus Coherentism. Part 2: Susan Haack s Foundherentist Approach Philosophy 5340 Epistemology Topic 6: Theories of Justification: Foundationalism versus Coherentism Part 2: Susan Haack s Foundherentist Approach Susan Haack, "A Foundherentist Theory of Empirical Justification"

More information

I guess I m just a good-old-fashioned internalist. A prominent position in philosophy of religion today is that religious experience can

I guess I m just a good-old-fashioned internalist. A prominent position in philosophy of religion today is that religious experience can Internalism and Properly Basic Belief Matthew Davidson (CSUSB) and Gordon Barnes (SUNY Brockport) mld@csusb.edu gbarnes@brockport.edu In this paper we set out and defend a view on which properly basic

More information

McDowell and the New Evil Genius

McDowell and the New Evil Genius 1 McDowell and the New Evil Genius Ram Neta and Duncan Pritchard 0. Many epistemologists both internalists and externalists regard the New Evil Genius Problem (Lehrer & Cohen 1983) as constituting an important

More information

Outsmarting the McKinsey-Brown argument? 1

Outsmarting the McKinsey-Brown argument? 1 Outsmarting the McKinsey-Brown argument? 1 Paul Noordhof Externalists about mental content are supposed to face the following dilemma. Either they must give up the claim that we have privileged access

More information

THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST MATERIALISM AND ITS SEMANTIC PREMISE

THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST MATERIALISM AND ITS SEMANTIC PREMISE Diametros nr 29 (wrzesień 2011): 80-92 THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST MATERIALISM AND ITS SEMANTIC PREMISE Karol Polcyn 1. PRELIMINARIES Chalmers articulates his argument in terms of two-dimensional

More information

Philosophy Epistemology. Topic 3 - Skepticism

Philosophy Epistemology. Topic 3 - Skepticism Michael Huemer on Skepticism Philosophy 3340 - Epistemology Topic 3 - Skepticism Chapter II. The Lure of Radical Skepticism 1. Mike Huemer defines radical skepticism as follows: Philosophical skeptics

More information

Self-Evidence and A Priori Moral Knowledge

Self-Evidence and A Priori Moral Knowledge Self-Evidence and A Priori Moral Knowledge Colorado State University BIBLID [0873-626X (2012) 33; pp. 459-467] Abstract According to rationalists about moral knowledge, some moral truths are knowable a

More information

DEFEASIBLE A PRIORI JUSTIFICATION: A REPLY TO THUROW

DEFEASIBLE A PRIORI JUSTIFICATION: A REPLY TO THUROW The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 58, No. 231 April 2008 ISSN 0031 8094 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.512.x DEFEASIBLE A PRIORI JUSTIFICATION: A REPLY TO THUROW BY ALBERT CASULLO Joshua Thurow offers a

More information

CRUCIAL TOPICS IN THE DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF EXTERNAL REASONS

CRUCIAL TOPICS IN THE DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF EXTERNAL REASONS CRUCIAL TOPICS IN THE DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF EXTERNAL REASONS By MARANATHA JOY HAYES A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

More information

VARIETIES OF EXTERNALISM

VARIETIES OF EXTERNALISM For a special issue of Philosophical Issues on Extended Knowledge VARIETIES OF EXTERNALISM J. Adam Carter, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos & Duncan Pritchard University of Edinburgh ABSTRACT. Our

More information

ALTERNATIVE SELF-DEFEAT ARGUMENTS: A REPLY TO MIZRAHI

ALTERNATIVE SELF-DEFEAT ARGUMENTS: A REPLY TO MIZRAHI ALTERNATIVE SELF-DEFEAT ARGUMENTS: A REPLY TO MIZRAHI Michael HUEMER ABSTRACT: I address Moti Mizrahi s objections to my use of the Self-Defeat Argument for Phenomenal Conservatism (PC). Mizrahi contends

More information

ON EPISTEMIC ENTITLEMENT. by Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. II Martin Davies

ON EPISTEMIC ENTITLEMENT. by Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. II Martin Davies by Crispin Wright and Martin Davies II Martin Davies EPISTEMIC ENTITLEMENT, WARRANT TRANSMISSION AND EASY KNOWLEDGE ABSTRACT Wright s account of sceptical arguments and his use of the idea of epistemic

More information

Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition

Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition [Published in American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2006): 147-58. Official version: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010233.] Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition ABSTRACT: Externalist theories

More information

Moral Twin Earth: The Intuitive Argument. Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have recently published a series of articles where they

Moral Twin Earth: The Intuitive Argument. Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have recently published a series of articles where they Moral Twin Earth: The Intuitive Argument Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have recently published a series of articles where they attack the new moral realism as developed by Richard Boyd. 1 The new moral

More information

A Defense of the Significance of the A Priori A Posteriori Distinction. Albert Casullo. University of Nebraska-Lincoln

A Defense of the Significance of the A Priori A Posteriori Distinction. Albert Casullo. University of Nebraska-Lincoln A Defense of the Significance of the A Priori A Posteriori Distinction Albert Casullo University of Nebraska-Lincoln The distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge has come under fire by a

More information

THINKING ANIMALS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

THINKING ANIMALS AND EPISTEMOLOGY THINKING ANIMALS AND EPISTEMOLOGY by ANTHONY BRUECKNER AND CHRISTOPHER T. BUFORD Abstract: We consider one of Eric Olson s chief arguments for animalism about personal identity: the view that we are each

More information

New Lessons from Old Demons: The Case for Reliabilism

New Lessons from Old Demons: The Case for Reliabilism New Lessons from Old Demons: The Case for Reliabilism Thomas Grundmann Our basic view of the world is well-supported. We do not simply happen to have this view but are also equipped with what seem to us

More information

by Blackwell Publishing, and is available at

by Blackwell Publishing, and is available at Fregean Sense and Anti-Individualism Daniel Whiting The definitive version of this article is published in Philosophical Books 48.3 July 2007 pp. 233-240 by Blackwell Publishing, and is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com.

More information

Wright on response-dependence and self-knowledge

Wright on response-dependence and self-knowledge Wright on response-dependence and self-knowledge March 23, 2004 1 Response-dependent and response-independent concepts........... 1 1.1 The intuitive distinction......................... 1 1.2 Basic equations

More information

What God Could Have Made

What God Could Have Made 1 What God Could Have Made By Heimir Geirsson and Michael Losonsky I. Introduction Atheists have argued that if there is a God who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, then God would have made

More information

Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal? Joseph Barnes

Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal? Joseph Barnes Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal? Joseph Barnes I. Motivation: what hangs on this question? II. How Primary? III. Kvanvig's argument that truth isn't the primary epistemic goal IV. David's argument

More information

Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits Seminar Fall 2006 Sherri Roush Chapter 8 Skepticism

Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits Seminar Fall 2006 Sherri Roush Chapter 8 Skepticism Chapter 8 Skepticism Williamson is diagnosing skepticism as a consequence of assuming too much knowledge of our mental states. The way this assumption is supposed to make trouble on this topic is that

More information

Is There Immediate Justification?

Is There Immediate Justification? Is There Immediate Justification? I. James Pryor (and Goldman): Yes A. Justification i. I say that you have justification to believe P iff you are in a position where it would be epistemically appropriate

More information

Against Phenomenal Conservatism

Against Phenomenal Conservatism Acta Anal DOI 10.1007/s12136-010-0111-z Against Phenomenal Conservatism Nathan Hanna Received: 11 March 2010 / Accepted: 24 September 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Recently,

More information

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 1

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 1 24.500 spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 1 self-knowledge 24.500 S05 1 no class next thursday 24.500 S05 2 self-knowledge = knowledge of one s mental states But what shall I now say that I

More information

Reliabilism: Holistic or Simple?

Reliabilism: Holistic or Simple? Reliabilism: Holistic or Simple? Jeff Dunn jeffreydunn@depauw.edu 1 Introduction A standard statement of Reliabilism about justification goes something like this: Simple (Process) Reliabilism: S s believing

More information

FOUNDATIONALISM AND ARBITRARINESS

FOUNDATIONALISM AND ARBITRARINESS FOUNDATIONALISM AND ARBITRARINESS by DANIEL HOWARD-SNYDER Abstract: Nonskeptical foundationalists say that there are basic beliefs. But, one might object, either there is a reason why basic beliefs are

More information

Self-ascription, self-knowledge, and the memory argument

Self-ascription, self-knowledge, and the memory argument Self-ascription, self-knowledge, and the memory argument Sanford C. Goldberg 1. Motivating the assumption: Burge on self-knowledge The thesis of this paper is that, in the context of an externalism about

More information

Phil Notes #9: The Infinite Regress Problem

Phil Notes #9: The Infinite Regress Problem Phil. 3340 Notes #9: The Infinite Regress Problem I. The Infinite Regress Problem: Introduction Basic Ideas: Sometimes we believe things for reasons. This is one (alleged) way a belief can be justified.

More information

Transmission Failure Failure Final Version in Philosophical Studies (2005), 126: Nicholas Silins

Transmission Failure Failure Final Version in Philosophical Studies (2005), 126: Nicholas Silins Transmission Failure Failure Final Version in Philosophical Studies (2005), 126: 71-102 Nicholas Silins Abstract: I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant,

More information

WHAT DOES KRIPKE MEAN BY A PRIORI?

WHAT DOES KRIPKE MEAN BY A PRIORI? Diametros nr 28 (czerwiec 2011): 1-7 WHAT DOES KRIPKE MEAN BY A PRIORI? Pierre Baumann In Naming and Necessity (1980), Kripke stressed the importance of distinguishing three different pairs of notions:

More information

Kantian Humility and Ontological Categories Sam Cowling University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Kantian Humility and Ontological Categories Sam Cowling University of Massachusetts, Amherst Kantian Humility and Ontological Categories Sam Cowling University of Massachusetts, Amherst [Forthcoming in Analysis. Penultimate Draft. Cite published version.] Kantian Humility holds that agents like

More information

Is there a distinction between a priori and a posteriori

Is there a distinction between a priori and a posteriori Lingnan University Digital Commons @ Lingnan University Theses & Dissertations Department of Philosophy 2014 Is there a distinction between a priori and a posteriori Hiu Man CHAN Follow this and additional

More information

Knowledge and its Limits, by Timothy Williamson. Oxford: Oxford University

Knowledge and its Limits, by Timothy Williamson. Oxford: Oxford University 718 Book Reviews public (p. vii) and one presumably to a more scholarly audience. This history appears to be reflected in the wide variation, in different parts of the volume, in the amount of ground covered,

More information

In Epistemic Relativism, Mark Kalderon defends a view that has become

In Epistemic Relativism, Mark Kalderon defends a view that has become Aporia vol. 24 no. 1 2014 Incoherence in Epistemic Relativism I. Introduction In Epistemic Relativism, Mark Kalderon defends a view that has become increasingly popular across various academic disciplines.

More information

Boghossian & Harman on the analytic theory of the a priori

Boghossian & Harman on the analytic theory of the a priori Boghossian & Harman on the analytic theory of the a priori PHIL 83104 November 2, 2011 Both Boghossian and Harman address themselves to the question of whether our a priori knowledge can be explained in

More information

Some proposals for understanding narrow content

Some proposals for understanding narrow content Some proposals for understanding narrow content February 3, 2004 1 What should we require of explanations of narrow content?......... 1 2 Narrow psychology as whatever is shared by intrinsic duplicates......

More information

Philosophy 5340 Epistemology Topic 4: Skepticism. Part 1: The Scope of Skepticism and Two Main Types of Skeptical Argument

Philosophy 5340 Epistemology Topic 4: Skepticism. Part 1: The Scope of Skepticism and Two Main Types of Skeptical Argument 1. The Scope of Skepticism Philosophy 5340 Epistemology Topic 4: Skepticism Part 1: The Scope of Skepticism and Two Main Types of Skeptical Argument The scope of skeptical challenges can vary in a number

More information

IN DEFENCE OF CLOSURE

IN DEFENCE OF CLOSURE IN DEFENCE OF CLOSURE IN DEFENCE OF CLOSURE By RICHARD FELDMAN Closure principles for epistemic justification hold that one is justified in believing the logical consequences, perhaps of a specified sort,

More information

Externalism and a priori knowledge of the world: Why privileged access is not the issue Maria Lasonen-Aarnio

Externalism and a priori knowledge of the world: Why privileged access is not the issue Maria Lasonen-Aarnio Externalism and a priori knowledge of the world: Why privileged access is not the issue Maria Lasonen-Aarnio This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Lasonen-Aarnio, M. (2006), Externalism

More information

Markie, Speckles, and Classical Foundationalism

Markie, Speckles, and Classical Foundationalism Markie, Speckles, and Classical Foundationalism In Classical Foundationalism and Speckled Hens Peter Markie presents a thoughtful and important criticism of my attempts to defend a traditional version

More information

Stout s teleological theory of action

Stout s teleological theory of action Stout s teleological theory of action Jeff Speaks November 26, 2004 1 The possibility of externalist explanations of action................ 2 1.1 The distinction between externalist and internalist explanations

More information

PHILOSOPHY 5340 EPISTEMOLOGY

PHILOSOPHY 5340 EPISTEMOLOGY PHILOSOPHY 5340 EPISTEMOLOGY Michael Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception Chapter V. A Version of Foundationalism 1. A Principle of Foundational Justification 1. Mike's view is that there is a

More information

Foundationalism Vs. Skepticism: The Greater Philosophical Ideology

Foundationalism Vs. Skepticism: The Greater Philosophical Ideology 1. Introduction Ryan C. Smith Philosophy 125W- Final Paper April 24, 2010 Foundationalism Vs. Skepticism: The Greater Philosophical Ideology Throughout this paper, the goal will be to accomplish three

More information

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND META-ETHICS

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND META-ETHICS The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 217 October 2004 ISSN 0031 8094 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND META-ETHICS BY IRA M. SCHNALL Meta-ethical discussions commonly distinguish subjectivism from emotivism,

More information

1 What is conceptual analysis and what is the problem?

1 What is conceptual analysis and what is the problem? 1 What is conceptual analysis and what is the problem? 1.1 What is conceptual analysis? In this book, I am going to defend the viability of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method. It therefore seems

More information

STEWART COHEN AND THE CONTEXTUALIST THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION

STEWART COHEN AND THE CONTEXTUALIST THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION FILOZOFIA Roč. 66, 2011, č. 4 STEWART COHEN AND THE CONTEXTUALIST THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION AHMAD REZA HEMMATI MOGHADDAM, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), School of Analytic Philosophy,

More information

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology Oxford Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 21 items for: booktitle : handbook phimet The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology Paul K. Moser (ed.) Item type: book DOI: 10.1093/0195130057.001.0001 This

More information

HABERMAS ON COMPATIBILISM AND ONTOLOGICAL MONISM Some problems

HABERMAS ON COMPATIBILISM AND ONTOLOGICAL MONISM Some problems Philosophical Explorations, Vol. 10, No. 1, March 2007 HABERMAS ON COMPATIBILISM AND ONTOLOGICAL MONISM Some problems Michael Quante In a first step, I disentangle the issues of scientism and of compatiblism

More information

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 2

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 2 24.500 spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 2 new time 3-6 wed readings slides teatime self-knowledge 24.500 S05 1 externalism and self-knowledge, contd. recall the distinction between privileged

More information

From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Epistemology Peter D. Klein Philosophical Concept Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits

More information

Seeing Through The Veil of Perception *

Seeing Through The Veil of Perception * Seeing Through The Veil of Perception * Abstract Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, that is, justify them in a way that does not rely on our

More information

Epistemological Externalism and the Project of Traditional Epistemology. Contemporary philosophers still haven't come to terms with the project of

Epistemological Externalism and the Project of Traditional Epistemology. Contemporary philosophers still haven't come to terms with the project of Epistemological Externalism and the Project of Traditional Epistemology 1 Epistemological Externalism and the Project of Traditional Epistemology Contemporary philosophers still haven't come to terms with

More information

To appear in J. Greco, ed., Philosophers and their Critics: Ernest Sosa, Oxford: Blackwell. Sosa on Abilities, Concepts and Externalism

To appear in J. Greco, ed., Philosophers and their Critics: Ernest Sosa, Oxford: Blackwell. Sosa on Abilities, Concepts and Externalism To appear in J. Greco, ed., Philosophers and their Critics: Ernest Sosa, Oxford: Blackwell. Sosa on Abilities, Concepts and Externalism Timothy Williamson A kind of intellectual project characteristic

More information

What Should We Believe?

What Should We Believe? 1 What Should We Believe? Thomas Kelly, University of Notre Dame James Pryor, Princeton University Blackwell Publishers Consider the following question: What should I believe? This question is a normative

More information

Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp Reprinted in Moral Luck (CUP, 1981).

Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp Reprinted in Moral Luck (CUP, 1981). Draft of 3-21- 13 PHIL 202: Core Ethics; Winter 2013 Core Sequence in the History of Ethics, 2011-2013 IV: 19 th and 20 th Century Moral Philosophy David O. Brink Handout #14: Williams, Internalism, and

More information

3. Knowledge and Justification

3. Knowledge and Justification THE PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE 11 3. Knowledge and Justification We have been discussing the role of skeptical arguments in epistemology and have already made some progress in thinking about reasoning and belief.

More information

Philosophical Perspectives, 16, Language and Mind, 2002 THE AIM OF BELIEF 1. Ralph Wedgwood Merton College, Oxford

Philosophical Perspectives, 16, Language and Mind, 2002 THE AIM OF BELIEF 1. Ralph Wedgwood Merton College, Oxford Philosophical Perspectives, 16, Language and Mind, 2002 THE AIM OF BELIEF 1 Ralph Wedgwood Merton College, Oxford 0. Introduction It is often claimed that beliefs aim at the truth. Indeed, this claim has

More information

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to The Theory of Knowledge, by Robert Audi. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to The Theory of Knowledge, by Robert Audi. New York: Routledge, 2011. Book Reviews Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to The Theory of Knowledge, by Robert Audi. New York: Routledge, 2011. BIBLID [0873-626X (2012) 33; pp. 540-545] Audi s (third) introduction to the

More information

APRIORISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

APRIORISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE MICHAEL McKINSEY APRIORISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE (Received 9 September, 1986) In this paper, I will try to motivate, clarify, and defend a principle in the philosophy of language that I will call

More information

Physicalism and Conceptual Analysis * Esa Díaz-León.

Physicalism and Conceptual Analysis * Esa Díaz-León. Physicalism and Conceptual Analysis * Esa Díaz-León pip01ed@sheffield.ac.uk Physicalism is a widely held claim about the nature of the world. But, as it happens, it also has its detractors. The first step

More information

INTUITION AND CONSCIOUS REASONING

INTUITION AND CONSCIOUS REASONING The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 63, No. 253 October 2013 ISSN 0031-8094 doi: 10.1111/1467-9213.12071 INTUITION AND CONSCIOUS REASONING BY OLE KOKSVIK This paper argues that, contrary to common opinion,

More information

MULTI-PEER DISAGREEMENT AND THE PREFACE PARADOX. Kenneth Boyce and Allan Hazlett

MULTI-PEER DISAGREEMENT AND THE PREFACE PARADOX. Kenneth Boyce and Allan Hazlett MULTI-PEER DISAGREEMENT AND THE PREFACE PARADOX Kenneth Boyce and Allan Hazlett Abstract The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 Pn

More information

An Inferentialist Conception of the A Priori. Ralph Wedgwood

An Inferentialist Conception of the A Priori. Ralph Wedgwood An Inferentialist Conception of the A Priori Ralph Wedgwood When philosophers explain the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, they usually characterize the a priori negatively, as involving

More information

what makes reasons sufficient?

what makes reasons sufficient? Mark Schroeder University of Southern California August 2, 2010 what makes reasons sufficient? This paper addresses the question: what makes reasons sufficient? and offers the answer, being at least as

More information

SUPPOSITIONAL REASONING AND PERCEPTUAL JUSTIFICATION

SUPPOSITIONAL REASONING AND PERCEPTUAL JUSTIFICATION SUPPOSITIONAL REASONING AND PERCEPTUAL JUSTIFICATION Stewart COHEN ABSTRACT: James Van Cleve raises some objections to my attempt to solve the bootstrapping problem for what I call basic justification

More information

Boghossian s Implicit Definition Template

Boghossian s Implicit Definition Template Ben Baker ben.baker@btinternet.com Boghossian s Implicit Definition Template Abstract: In Boghossian's 1997 paper, 'Analyticity' he presented an account of a priori knowledge of basic logical principles

More information

WHY NATURALISM? 179 DAVID COPP WHY NATURALISM?

WHY NATURALISM? 179 DAVID COPP WHY NATURALISM? WHY NATURALISM? 179 WHY NATURALISM? ABSTRACT. My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking

More information

Internalism and Properly Basic Belief. Matthew Davidson, CSUSB Gordon Barnes, SUNY-Brockport

Internalism and Properly Basic Belief. Matthew Davidson, CSUSB Gordon Barnes, SUNY-Brockport 1 Internalism and Properly Basic Belief Matthew Davidson, CSUSB (md@fastmail.net) Gordon Barnes, SUNY-Brockport (gbarnes@brockport.edu) To appear in: Philosophy and the Christian Worldview : Analysis,

More information

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 7

spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 7 24.500 spring 05 topics in philosophy of mind session 7 teatime self-knowledge 24.500 S05 1 plan self-blindness, one more time Peacocke & Co. immunity to error through misidentification: Shoemaker s self-reference

More information

IN SEARCH OF DIRECT REALISM

IN SEARCH OF DIRECT REALISM IN SEARCH OF DIRECT REALISM Laurence BonJour University of Washington It is fairly standard in accounts of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge to distinguish three main alternative positions: representationalism

More information

Rationalism of a moderate variety has recently enjoyed the renewed interest of

Rationalism of a moderate variety has recently enjoyed the renewed interest of EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR RATIONALISM? [PENULTIMATE DRAFT] Joel Pust University of Delaware 1. Introduction Rationalism of a moderate variety has recently enjoyed the renewed interest of epistemologists.

More information

A Priori Skepticism and the KK Thesis

A Priori Skepticism and the KK Thesis A Priori Skepticism and the KK Thesis James R. Beebe (University at Buffalo) International Journal for the Study of Skepticism (forthcoming) In Beebe (2011), I argued against the widespread reluctance

More information

Can logical consequence be deflated?

Can logical consequence be deflated? Can logical consequence be deflated? Michael De University of Utrecht Department of Philosophy Utrecht, Netherlands mikejde@gmail.com in Insolubles and Consequences : essays in honour of Stephen Read,

More information

Experience and Foundationalism in Audi s The Architecture of Reason

Experience and Foundationalism in Audi s The Architecture of Reason Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXVII, No. 1, July 2003 Experience and Foundationalism in Audi s The Architecture of Reason WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG Dartmouth College Robert Audi s The Architecture

More information

KNOWLEDGE ON AFFECTIVE TRUST. Arnon Keren

KNOWLEDGE ON AFFECTIVE TRUST. Arnon Keren Abstracta SPECIAL ISSUE VI, pp. 33 46, 2012 KNOWLEDGE ON AFFECTIVE TRUST Arnon Keren Epistemologists of testimony widely agree on the fact that our reliance on other people's testimony is extensive. However,

More information

Theories of epistemic justification can be divided into two groups: internalist and

Theories of epistemic justification can be divided into two groups: internalist and 1 Internalism and externalism about justification Theories of epistemic justification can be divided into two groups: internalist and externalist. Internalist theories of justification say that whatever

More information

Is there a good epistemological argument against platonism? DAVID LIGGINS

Is there a good epistemological argument against platonism? DAVID LIGGINS [This is the penultimate draft of an article that appeared in Analysis 66.2 (April 2006), 135-41, available here by permission of Analysis, the Analysis Trust, and Blackwell Publishing. The definitive

More information

THE SEMANTIC REALISM OF STROUD S RESPONSE TO AUSTIN S ARGUMENT AGAINST SCEPTICISM

THE SEMANTIC REALISM OF STROUD S RESPONSE TO AUSTIN S ARGUMENT AGAINST SCEPTICISM SKÉPSIS, ISSN 1981-4194, ANO VII, Nº 14, 2016, p. 33-39. THE SEMANTIC REALISM OF STROUD S RESPONSE TO AUSTIN S ARGUMENT AGAINST SCEPTICISM ALEXANDRE N. MACHADO Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) Email:

More information

Epistemological Foundations for Koons Cosmological Argument?

Epistemological Foundations for Koons Cosmological Argument? Epistemological Foundations for Koons Cosmological Argument? Koons (2008) argues for the very surprising conclusion that any exception to the principle of general causation [i.e., the principle that everything

More information

INTRODUCTION. This week: Moore's response, Nozick's response, Reliablism's response, Externalism v. Internalism.

INTRODUCTION. This week: Moore's response, Nozick's response, Reliablism's response, Externalism v. Internalism. GENERAL PHILOSOPHY WEEK 2: KNOWLEDGE JONNY MCINTOSH INTRODUCTION Sceptical scenario arguments: 1. You cannot know that SCENARIO doesn't obtain. 2. If you cannot know that SCENARIO doesn't obtain, you cannot

More information

It doesn t take long in reading the Critique before we are faced with interpretive challenges. Consider the very first sentence in the A edition:

It doesn t take long in reading the Critique before we are faced with interpretive challenges. Consider the very first sentence in the A edition: The Preface(s) to the Critique of Pure Reason It doesn t take long in reading the Critique before we are faced with interpretive challenges. Consider the very first sentence in the A edition: Human reason

More information

Williamson s proof of the primeness of mental states

Williamson s proof of the primeness of mental states Williamson s proof of the primeness of mental states February 3, 2004 1 The shape of Williamson s argument...................... 1 2 Terminology.................................... 2 3 The argument...................................

More information

What Lurks Beneath the Integrity Objection. Bernard Williams s alienation and integrity arguments against consequentialism have

What Lurks Beneath the Integrity Objection. Bernard Williams s alienation and integrity arguments against consequentialism have What Lurks Beneath the Integrity Objection Bernard Williams s alienation and integrity arguments against consequentialism have served as the point of departure for much of the most interesting work that

More information