Externalism: A subject’s belief can be justified even if the justification is not consciously available to the subject. For instance, if the belief is formed on the basis of a reliable perceptual faculty, it may be a justified belief even if the subject is not aware that the relevant faculty is reliable or even that the relevant faculty is the source of the belief.
Internalism: A subject’s beliefs are justified only if the subject has conscious access to the justification.
I sympathize with the meta-answer (as above) of discarding the notion of a “justified belief” in favor of talking about how experiences serve as evidence for beliefs, but it’s not clear to me that that precludes engaging with the question at its own level. Yes, whether a belief is “justified” can be expressed more precisely in terms of confidence intervals based on available evidence, but I’m not convinced that it needs to be.
I end up saying it depends.
I would say I’m justified in believing the two objects I’m looking at are the same size if they look the same size to me, even if I’m not consciously aware of the process whereby I arrive at that belief, even in cases where it turns out that they aren’t the same size after all. Which is an externalist position as described here.
But I would not say I’m justified in believing any proposition I happen to believe. In some cases I would declare a belief unjustified if I’m not aware of the mechanism whereby I arrive at it. So I’m not comfortable describing myself as an externalist in a broader sense, or even as leaning towards externalism in a broader sense.
Thinking about it some more, I suppose this dichotomy dissolves if I’m willing to treat sufficiently vague patterns as a “relevant faculty”. “I believe the objects are the same size because that’s what my eyes report and my eyes have a good track record about that sort of thing” might qualify as having conscious access to justification, in which case I suppose I’m an internalist… I can’t imagine a belief I would call justified for which there isn’t some kind of explanation of that sort, however vague, that I can make. But this seems uninteresting.
Justification: externalism or internalism?
[pollid:81]
Other: “Justification” is just another complicated pre-Bayes way of trying to understand what belief is.
Same
Externalism: A subject’s belief can be justified even if the justification is not consciously available to the subject. For instance, if the belief is formed on the basis of a reliable perceptual faculty, it may be a justified belief even if the subject is not aware that the relevant faculty is reliable or even that the relevant faculty is the source of the belief.
Internalism: A subject’s beliefs are justified only if the subject has conscious access to the justification.
Aren’t these just different definitions of the word “justified”, rather than arguments about what is actually “justified”?
Quite possibly.
Yes. The question is what you mean when you say the word “justified” regarding a belief, without stating a definition.
DanArmak, Much of what goes by “philosophy” these days is isomorphic to that, in case that shocks you.
Voted for “externalism”, but caring about whether a belief is “justified” is probably a mistake.
Other: whatever. The correct answer is Bayes, and the engineering approach. Let the philosophers fight over which of these that is.
Other:
I dithered on this a lot.
I sympathize with the meta-answer (as above) of discarding the notion of a “justified belief” in favor of talking about how experiences serve as evidence for beliefs, but it’s not clear to me that that precludes engaging with the question at its own level. Yes, whether a belief is “justified” can be expressed more precisely in terms of confidence intervals based on available evidence, but I’m not convinced that it needs to be.
I end up saying it depends.
I would say I’m justified in believing the two objects I’m looking at are the same size if they look the same size to me, even if I’m not consciously aware of the process whereby I arrive at that belief, even in cases where it turns out that they aren’t the same size after all. Which is an externalist position as described here.
But I would not say I’m justified in believing any proposition I happen to believe. In some cases I would declare a belief unjustified if I’m not aware of the mechanism whereby I arrive at it. So I’m not comfortable describing myself as an externalist in a broader sense, or even as leaning towards externalism in a broader sense.
Thinking about it some more, I suppose this dichotomy dissolves if I’m willing to treat sufficiently vague patterns as a “relevant faculty”. “I believe the objects are the same size because that’s what my eyes report and my eyes have a good track record about that sort of thing” might qualify as having conscious access to justification, in which case I suppose I’m an internalist… I can’t imagine a belief I would call justified for which there isn’t some kind of explanation of that sort, however vague, that I can make. But this seems uninteresting.