Elusive externalism

Journal article

Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ‘p, but I shouldn’t believe p’. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are ‘elusive’ in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internalist principles. I argue that this allows us to do justice to the motivations behind both (i) and (ii). And I explain in some detail what a view of evidence that implements this strategy, and makes it independently plausible, might look like.

Authors: Salow, B

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Mind
• Volume: 128
• Issue: 510
• Pages: 397-427
• Publication date: 2017-11-04
• Acceptance date: 2017-08-04
• DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzx015
• EISSN: 1460-2113
• ISSN: 0026-4423
• Language: English