An Encroachment Argument for Internalism

Abstract

In this chapter I want to discuss whether or not a variety of principles of encroachment support a robust internal justification requirement on knowledge of action-guiding beliefs. A broad variety of religiously significant propositions are action-guiding, hence the relevance of this chapter to religious epistemology. This chapter proceeds as follows. In Section II, I lay out an argument I have named “the encroachment argument for internalism” (EAFI for now). The conclusion of the EAFI is that there are a pair of nonstandard access requirements on a normal subject s’s justification for her action-guiding beliefs. In Sections III and IV, I defend each of the two premises of EAFI and briefly describe how my deontologically grounded internalism is able to handle objections to such accounts based on the fact we have limited voluntary control over what we believe (Alston 1988; Plantinga 1993a).