Externalism and Internalism about Knowledge

Abstract

At the end of chapter 1, we considered how the externalism/ internalism distinction regarding knowledge is usually characterised. Recall that we defined this distinction in terms of whether one regarded internal epistemic conditions as being necessary for knowledge, where an internal epistemic condition is a condition where the facts which determine that one has satisfied that condition are reflectively accessible to the agent. Typically, the internal epistemic condition in question is the justification condition, as it is conceived of in the classical theory of knowledge. Construed this way, the epistemic externalism/internalism distinction collapses into the question of whether one thinks that justification is necessary for knowledge. Epistemic internalists think that knowledge requires justification (and usually something else as well, such as an anti-luck condition to deal with the Gettier cases), while epistemic externalists allow that one can have knowledge while failing to have a belief which is (internalistically) justified.