Any adult cognizer, for instance, is apt to have many thousands of justified beliefs at any moment, with very few if any of them occurrent at a given time, and all of them backed by justifiers. If all of these justifiers are mental states, as mentalism contends, most of them would be buried deep in one's mental storehouse, beyond the reach of reflective awareness. A possible response to this line of thought would be to point out that typically a person can think of a justification for her justified beliefs, even for cases where one's justified beliefs and their respective justifiers have been stored in the mind for a long time.
Consider again the case of one's justified belief that Illinois was Lincoln's home state. For most people this belief is justified, but hardly ever occurrent, and neither are its justifiers. On an occasion when the belief is occurrent one may be able to supply a justification for it. For instance one might note that one must have learned this fact in elementary school, and that one had entertained this fact on earlier occasions since the belief was first acquired.
These are thoughts one has on the present occasion and so are mental states; and they are items of awareness and thus accessible to reflective awareness. So even when the justifiers that are mental states are not directly accessible, we might think, some justifiers are always available to reflection, because we can think of what would serve to justify current beliefs.
So mentalism does after all entail accessibility, because one can always provide or think of a justification. It cannot be denied that people very often can supply justification for their beliefs. It can be wondered, however, whether this is always so. Supplying a justification is a fairly sophisticated activity, and many children would be poorly equipped to engage in it.
Yet surely these children have justified beliefs. Another perhaps more fundamental point is this: it is not clear that the justification one would supply on some occasion constitutes the set of justifiers one then has for that belief.
In the case at hand, one is now justified in believing that Illinois was Lincoln's home state. Further, one has been justified in believing this for some time, including the time period immediately before one attempted to supply a justification. Hence, prior to making that attempt, one already has, or there already are in place, some justifiers for that belief about Lincoln.
The only alternatives to thinking this would be to say either that on this occasion, prior to supplying a justification, nothing justifies one's belief about Lincoln, though the belief itself is justified nonetheless; or that the belief is not justified, contrary to appearances. Neither of these possibilities seems at all plausible, however, so we need to allow that there are some justifiers for the Lincoln belief prior to and independently of one's attempt to think up a justification.
Indeed, the most natural thing to say about thesse cases of justified beliefs of long standing is that the fact that these beliefs have been stored in memory is what makes up their justification. Thus, even if we presume that every cognizer is always in a position to provide a justification, this point does not serve to show that mentalism entails accessibility internalism.
Goldman , , has a good discussion of memory preservation in relation to cases like that of the belief that Illinois was Lincoln's home state. Goldman also discusses problems that may arise for the memory preservation account. The deontological concept of justification could be conjoined with either accessibility internalism or with mentalism. But these latter two forms of internalism are not logically connected to the deontological concept.
Hence, if it were a fact that the concept of epistemic justification is deontological, this fact would not imply mentalism. Nor does mentalism entail the correctness of the deontological concept.
For mentalism is compatible with a concept of justification defined in terms of degree of evidential support, or adequacy of evidential support, and there is nothing particularly deontic about either of these ideas. Exactly the same may be said of accessibility internalism. It readily conjoins with a concept of justification of either of these evidential sorts, and so accessibility internalism does not entail that a deontological concept of justification is correct.
The reverse may be true, however. That is, if justification is really a deontological concept, this fact may have implications for accessibility. Further, since we saw earlier that accessibility internalism is some evidence for mentalism, the correctness of the deontological concept would also have some bearing on mentalism.
This line of thought is taken up in the next two sections, where arguments in favor of various forms of internalism are considered. One line of argument that can be offered in favor of accessibility internalism, though one that has seldom found explicit expression in the literature, trades on the idea that one is justified in believing p only if one has justified the belief that p.
Leite discusses the connection between being justified and justifying. Justifying a belief, of course, is an activity in which one adduces evidence or reasons in favor of the belief, and when one is engaged in this activity one is actively aware of the evidence or reasons brought forward. Of course, if one actually is aware of these bits of evidence or reasons, then certainly one can be aware of them.
These items of evidence or reasons offered in the act of justifying, we may say, are the justifiers for the belief in question. Hence, if being justified implies having justified, then being justified implies that one can be aware of the justifiers. So, we might conclude, the mere fact that there are justified beliefs implies accessibility internalism. There are, however, two important problems with this argument. First, the major premise of the argument seems false.
A very large percentage of one's of justified beliefs were never justified in the manner envisioned. We need only recall the example of rapid acquisition of many perceptual beliefs, all of them justified.
But none were justified by any activity engaged in by the cognizer, either at the moment of acquisition or at any later time. Moreover, second, even if each justified belief was at some time justified, this fact implies only that there was some time at which the cognizer could be aware by reflection of the relevant justifiers. It hardly follows that the cognizer can be reflectively aware of these justifiers at any time she cares to try, and it is this sort of accessibility that internalism requires.
If accessibility internalism were merely the thesis that for each justified belief p , there is some time at which the cognizer can be aware of the essential justifiers for the belief that p , then accessibility externalism would become the thesis that there is never a time at which the cognizer can be reflectively aware of the relevant justifiers. Yet the externalist position is the much more modest point that there are some cases of justified belief where the cognizer is unable to be reflectively aware of the essential justifiers.
Defense of accessibility internalism on the grounds that being justified implies having actually justified would make externalism into far too strong a thesis. Another possible argument for accessibility internalism trades on being able to justify one's belief. The idea is that one is justified in believing p only if one can justify the belief that p.
If one were to actually engage in justifying this belief, then at that time one would be aware of the justifiers. So, if one can justify the belief that p , it is reasonable to think that one can be reflectively aware of the justifiers for p. Here, again, we would have to contend with the examples of young cognizers who certainly have justified beliefs but are in no position intellectually to justify those beliefs.
They simply lack the cognitive wherewithal to engage in that sort of activity, but this fact does not prevent them from having beliefs that are justified. Thus, the core idea in this argument for internalism is false. There is also another problem, even if the core idea could be sustained.
Any activity of actually justifying a belief is context and audience sensitive. For this reason, it is difficult to say which if any of the things one would offer in an activity of justifying would actually constitute the set of justifiers for the given belief.
What one would identify as justifiers in such activities would be subject to such variability, that it is hard to see how we could select any sub-set of such items and safely maintain that they are the justifiers. The last two arguments, making use of the idea, first, that being justified implies having justified, and then second, that being justified implies being able to justify, may be taken to show a key way that defenders of accessibility internalism may conceive of justified belief or knowledge.
The paradigm they may have in mind is that being justified in believing that p is a state one achieves by working things out, reasoning through some sequence of evidentiary steps and then drawing a conclusion that counts as the justified belief. When one engages in reasoning of this type one is aware of the steps through which one reasons and, inter alia , also aware of the justifiers that serve to support one's conclusion.
Following this line of thought, it is perhaps natural to think that one can recapitulate at a later time the reasoning one went through enroute to one's justified belief. If this is so, then surely one can justify one's belief, and thus be reflectively aware of the justifiers for that belief. It cannot be denied that one often arrives at beliefs, including justified ones, in just this fashion.
It should also be clear, however, that a great many beliefs, including many justified ones, are not acquired or sustained in this manner. We need only remind ourselves of how much knowledge and justified belief is gotten from perceptual experience and we then realize that a great many items of knowledge and justified belief are not arrived at via reasoning, however generously we construe that operation.
A general argument for accessibility internalism has been proposed on behalf of the internalist, and this reconstructed argument has the merit of being extendable to mentalism Goldman ; note that Goldman is well-known for defending externalism and is thus no friend of internalism. The idea behind GD is that one ought to guide the formation of one's beliefs by the amount and strength of the evidence one has on hand, and this certainly has a deontological ring to it.
The GD conception, on the other hand, is a thesis about how a person ought to go about forming her beliefs. With this distinction drawn, the general argument for internalism is straightforward:. And plainly a form of accessibility internalism is what is being noted in 2 , though this argument does not distinguish between whether all or only some of the justifiers determiners are to be accessible.
The inference from 2 to 3 , however, certainly seems to suppose that accessibility internalism implies mentalism, a move that was found questionable earlier in this article. The point about complete justifier accounts matters for the evaluation of this argument for internalism.
As we noted earlier, complete justifier accounts of accessibility internalism provide strong support for mentalism. If complete justifier accounts were considered, premise 3 would have some ring of plausibility. However, we have seen, complete justifier versions of accessibility internalism are too strong; and, partial justifier accounts considerably weaken the support for mentalism. Considering premise 3 in the light of partial justifier accounts of accessibility, we would have to say at once that 3 is false.
Partial justifier accounts do not even provide strong support for mentalism, let alone imply it. There is also a problem with premise 1 , concerning the GD conception of justification. While it is true that some philosophers who have accepted internalism, of either the accessibility or mentalist forms, have also accepted this GD conception, they need not do so.
Indeed, some leading internalists explicitly reject the GD conception and any deontological concept that is proposed as an analysis of the concept of justification, and yet this fact has no effect on their one important form of internalism, namely mentalism Conee and Feldman These comments reinforce the comments made earlier to the effect that the deontological concept of justification is really independent of accessibility internalism and mentalism.
If accessibility internalism is not to be defended by means of something like the general argument presented here, then it is most likely one would have to fall back on the arguments given earlier concerning either actually justifying a belief or being capable of justifying that belief. As we saw, those arguments break down, thereby leaving accessibility internalism wholly unsupported.
There is another argument for access internalism, one which stresses having reasons. This argument is presented as a case against externalist accounts of justification and it utilizes examples of subjects who are clairvoyant. In one such example we have a person, Norman, who arrives at his belief that the President is in New York City through some clairvoyance process, and we may presume that this belief is true. Norman's exercise of clairvoyance may generally yield true beliefs in Norman, not just about the President's whereabouts, and so clairvoyance, for him, is a reliable belief-forming process, and the externalist would have to count Norman's belief about the President's location as justified.
What would make the cognizer's belief rational would be if he or she were to have good reasons for holding the believed proposition to be true. The cognizer may well have reasons for a belief, and these reasons may provide some measure of justification for that belief. If and maybe only if, the cognizer also has has some awareness of these justifying reasons, or the capacity to have such awareness of these reasons, will she have some reason to believe the believed proposition is true.
So, we could conclude that access internalism is quite plausible after all, because it is quite plausible to maintain that a person's justification for a belief depends squarely on having reasons to believe that the believed proposition is true. Possession of these reasons would insure that the belief is not merely a "stray hunch. The argument about having reasons for belief is thus both an argument against externalism, and also strong support for endorsing access internalism.
Nevertheless, despite the great intuitive appeal of the SPO, and the support it provides for access internalism, a dilemmatic argument may amount to an insurmountable obstacle for any form of access internalism Bergmann This dilemmatic argument starts by distinguishing between nonconceptual awareness in which no concept is applied and no judgment made; and strong awareness, which is conceptual. Strong awareness involves a knowing that or justifiably believing that something is the case.
We can adapt this distinction to the two cases of access internalism distinguished earlier, namely weak and strong AJI. To do this we presume that the awareness spoken of in weak AJI is weak, non-conceptual awareness, and that the awareness noted in strong AJI is strong awareness. Then, the dillema for the access internalist, so adapted, is this: If the access internalist requires strong awareness as in strong AJI, then her position will lead to an infinite regress. If, on the other hand, the access internalist settles for non-conceptual awareness, as in weak AJI, then her position will fall prey to the SPO, thus undercutting the best case for access internalism.
Thus, access internalism should be rejected. This dilemma argument can be aimed at both actual and potential internalism awareness, as well as how those might be aligned with either propositional or doxastic justification Bergmann , chap. Here we will cover just potential awareness aligned with doxastic justification; that should be enough to show the strength of the dilemma argument.
If the access internalism understands awareness as non-conceptual awareness, then being aware of a justifier would be an event in which no concept is applied and no belief is acquired or judgment made. In that case, the event of being aware of the justifier would be no different from the cognizer's point of view from an event such as belief acquisition by means of a reliable process.
Thus, from that cognizer's standpoint, her true belief would be no more than a "stray hunch or arbitrary conviction. Given this result, the access internalist should, and no doubt would, opt for strong awareness, encapsulated here in strong AJI.
Then, if a cognizer has a justified belief that p , she will be capable of knowing that, and so justifiably believing that there is some item j that is a justifier for her belief that p. In turn, this will require that she be capable of knowing that, and thus justifiably believing that there is some item, j 1 , that is a justifier for her belief that j is a justifier for her belief that p.
Then her belief that j 1 is this sort of justifier will require that she be capable of knowing that, and so justifiably believing that there is an item, j 2 , that is a justifier for her belief that j 1 is a justifier for her belief that j is a justifier for her belief that p. This will then require that she be capable of knowing that, and so justifiably believing that, there is an item, j 3 , and so on to infinity.
In order to have a single justified belief, the cognizer would have to be capable of having an infinite number of further beliefs concerning justifiers. Bergmann ; Wedgwood , , gives a similar argument, though aimed at rational belief.
This argument may be taken to show that strong AJI, making use of strong awareness, leads to scepticism. More importantly, the argument shows that strong AJI requires that a cognizer with a justified belief be capable of holding justified beliefs of "ever increasing complexity" Bergmann , p. So, strong AJI should be rejected as untenable. Hence, access internalism is implausible and should be rejected, because neither its weak nor its strong form is acceptable.
There is a response to the dilemma argument, one that raises additional interesting issues. We focus first on a case of a basic belief. A person has in her visual field a green triangular shape; this is what she experiences.
The green triangular shape is the experiential element, and the awareness this cognizer has of that element is "non-propositional and non-conceptual" BonJour , It thus involves no belief or judgment, and no issue of justification arises for this awareness. In such circumstances, a cognizer will often form a belief that there is a green triangular shape in her visual field.
The idea is that first the cognizer will entertain the propositional claim that there is a green triangular shape in the visual field, and merely by entertaining this propositional claim she does not thereby have a belief. Rather, she comes to have a belief once she accepts the propositional claim. This point concerning the transition from merely entertaining the propositional claim to actually believing it, interesting though it may be, is one that will not figure in the argument as given here.
There is a third element to be considered, namely the cognizer's direct awareness of "fit" between the experiential element and the propositional claim.
The point can be put this way:. The general thought is not that the experience of the experiential element by itself justifies the belief in the propositional claim. What, though, of a position in which the direct awareness of the fit or agreement between the two elements does all of the justificatory work? On this account, the experience of the experiential element taken together with the belief in the propositional claim and the fact that there is the relevant fit between these two elements — all of these things taken together provide no justification for the belief.
It is only when the cognizer directly recognizes the relevant fit that her belief about the green triangular shape is justified. The problem with this interpretation of the argument in response to the dilemma argument is that it would not count as a version of access internalism.
The reason should be clear: on the above described account, the cognizer is not aware of any justifiers. So it seems best to understand this line of argument to be saying this: the fact that the cognizer has the relevant experience of the green traingular shape, plus the fact the fact that there is a fit or agreement between the experiential element and the propositional claim provides some justification for the belief in that proposition; and the direct recognition of fit or agreement between those elements serves to enhance that degree of justification.
In this way, the cognizer will access some justifiers when she directly recognizes a fit or agreement between the experiential element and the propositional claim. Bergmann , , offers a similar interpretation, though he speaks of contributors to justification rather than justifiers.
Thus the general idea is that this account of the justification of a basic belief avoids the dilemma argument. Part of the reason for thinking this is that direct recognition of fit between the experiential element and the propositional claim "…grows out of [my] awareness of the content of the claim and of the corresponding experience.
To be sure, I must recognize the fit between the two, but this recognition is not a further, cognitively independent judgment, which would then require further independent justification, but is instead cognitively guided by and based on those experiences themselves" BonJour , Another reason the regress is avoided, according to BonJour, is that the direct recognition of fit is not strong awareness, something that is needed to initiate and fuel the regress in the dilemma argument.
Philosophers who have discussed basic beliefs have often noted that no special evidence or reasons are needed beyond the having of the relevant experience in order for the belief to count as justified. In effect, the response to the dilemma argument is telling us why this is is or may be the case. It is not, on this account, because the experience alone justifies the belief, but rather because the experience and the fact that there is a fit between the experiential content and the proposition believed enables the cognizer to recognize the fit between those elements.
This enabling is likely what is meant by saying that the direct recognition of fit "grows out of" the experience. In that sense, no additional evidence or reasons are needed to effect the justification, and so the regress does not begin.
That leaves the direct recognition of fit. We know the regress will threaten if direct recognition of fit is strong awareness. Weak awareness will not help, because that will lead straight back to the SPO, and in any case weak awareness is ruled out as not what is needed BonJour , So, direct recognition of fit must be some form of awareness that is, so to speak, intermediate between weak and strong awareness.
It is something with some conceptual content, but does not collapse into strong awareness as one might be inclined to think Bergmann , Perhaps the best conclusion to draw at this point is that this intriguing idea of a direct recognition of fit, if further developed and clarified, together with the point about enabling made above, will suffice to block the regress in the dilemma argument. Without that further clarification and development which would differentiate recognition of fit from strong awareness, however, the dilemma argument would seem to have full force against access internalism.
A very strong argument for mentalism has been proposed Conee and Feldman The argument has two prongs: first, we are given a number of cases in which the best explanation for why one person has a higher degree of justification than another is that the first person has some specific mental state; and then second, it is argued that the mentalist theory can satisfactorily deal with problem cases and criticisms.
One of the examples used in the first prong of the argument is this:. Ray had just the forecast to rely on. Conee and Feldman , p. The strength of this argument is that it makes use of something indisputable, viz. It is clear that this argument is not decisive, though neither is it claimed to be. The number of cases it examines is very small, of course, but that is not the principal limitation. The important point is that enhancing one's justification, as in Bob's situation, is compatible with the initial justifiers prior to enhancement being elements other than the mental states of the individuals involved.
The example of Ray and Bob, and the other examples Conee and Feldman give in which justification is enhanced, all assume that some degree of justification is already on hand before the enhancement event. Nothing in their examples gives us reason to suppose that initial justification is supplied by mental states.
So, while it may be granted that their argument provides some good evidence for mentalism, it does not go far enough by itself. The second prong of the overall argument for menralism, however, may well make up the difference.
In this part of the case for mentalism, a number of important objections that have been lodged against internalism are addressed, either of the accessibility or the mentalist variety, and it is argued that the mentalist position can accommodate the points made in the objections. The natural idea is that meeting outstanding objections strengthens the overall argument for mentalism. One of these objections and the reply to it brings up what may be the deepest and most fundamental issue dividing mentalist internalists and externalists.
First, the objection:. The problem, in short, is that justifiers other than or in addition to mental states are needed if we are to explicate the justification of many beliefs, and that even defenders of mentalism will have to recognize this point. Not all justifiers, therefore, are mental states, and so mentalism would have to be either abandoned or modified. The important question being raised by this objection is whether the logical or probabilistic support relations are themselves justifiers; or are the justifiers confined to the entities over which the support relations are to hold?
If we think that these support relations holding between one's evidence and the beliefs are themselves justifiers, then mentalism is compromised though the mixed mentalist theory cited earlier as a possibility is not thereby affected. Then, one could say that being aware of these relations is a justifier, as are the mental states making up one's evidence; and, of course, awareness is a mental state.
Taking this option, however, leads to worries about whether all cognizers will be in a position to meet the high-order requirement. Recognition of logical and probabilistic support relations, after all, is a fairly sophisticated act. Many will think, however, that even this awareness of some support relation vaguely characterized is beyond the grasp of some cognizers, such as young children, who nonetheless have perfectly justified beliefs. The other alternative would be to deny that the logical and probabilistic support relations are themselves justifiers.
This would protect mentalism from criticism concerning logical and probabilistic relations; the only justifiers would be the mental states themselves. Here is a suggestion for how this might work for very simple cases.
The key idea here is what it is to understand a proposition p. The suggestion is that in very simple cases, where the logical connection between p and q is immediate, part of one's understanding of p is to also believe q.
This line of argument depends squarely on a concept of understanding a proposition, and its prospect for success awaits development of a theory of understanding. Even if this can be developed in a promising way, however, it will work only for very simple logical connections. Knowledge Externalism. Marc Alspector-kelly - - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 3 — Paul Boghossian - - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 2 Ruth G. Millikan - - Mind Paul Boghossian - - Philosophical Issues Added to PP index Total views 1, 3, of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 44 19, of 2,, How can I increase my downloads?
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