Externalist internalism: essays on hybrid theories in the philosophy of mind and epistemology

Thesis

This thesis collects four chapters connected by the theme of hybridity across theories in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. More precisely, this thesis assesses the consistency of hybrid epistemic internalism, a view that combines externalism about mental states with epistemic internalism.

I begin in chapter 1 by motivating both views. I distinguish between two variants of epistemic internalism, access internalism and mentalism, that are motivated by two considerations, the access motivation and the Equal Justification Thesis. I defend a non-standard version of access internalism that focusses on the permissive notion of “ready access”. I identify two challenges to the consistency of hybrid epistemic internalism: the access problem and the equal justification problem.

In chapter 2, I turn to the equal justification problem. State externalism undercuts the Equal Justification Thesis which states that individuals in the bad case have justification to believe the same things as their internal duplicates in the good case. I argue that a weak variant of the thesis, the Indiscriminable Justification Thesis, solves the equal justification problem if certain results of chapter 3 and 4 are established.

In chapter 3, I discuss the access problem in the form of the discrimination argument against ready access to one’s external states. I defend the discrimination argument against a compatibilist strategy that argues either that the discrimination argument is not sound, or that its application conditions are not relevant to us. I conclude that state externalism leads to an access problem.

In chapter 4, I defend a novel epistemic definition of the internalism/externalism debate about mind, the categorical epistemic definition. According to this view, state internalists and externalists disagree about the possibility of “mental state switching”. The view implies that state externalism leads to an access problem by definition. Further, by emphasising the difference between an epistemic definition of the debate and metaphysically committing accounts within the debate, the proposed view avoids common objections.

Authors: Bartholain, M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-4jwvygjgk
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: consistency; epistemic internalism; externalism about mental states; hybrid theories; equal justification thesis; privileged access
• Subjects: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language