Epistemology’s False Dichotomy

 Consider the following quote by William Hasker: 

“Epistemo­logical externalism has its greatest plausibility in cases where the warrant for our beliefs depends crucially on matters not accessible to reflection­, for instance, on the proper functioning of our sensory capacities. Rational inference, in contrast, is the paradigmatic example of a situation in which the factors relevant to warrant are accessible to reflection; for this reason, examples based on rational insight have always formed the prime ex­amples for internalist epistemologies.”

Hasker’s comment highlights a key distinction between internalism and externalism in epistemology. For many internalists, warrant must be something that is subjectively available to the believer. It is something the believer can reflect upon and that allows them to make sense of why they form the beliefs that they do (and why they are right to do so). By contrast, for many externalists, a belief can be warranted whether or not a subject is able to recognize or reflect upon what warrants their belief. 

Insofar as these positions are understood as competing views about the conditions under which beliefs are warranted, their merits can be straightforwardly compared with one another. However, it is not clear to me that this is how we should understand these positions. 

Consider Descartes’s reflections on doubt. When Descartes realized that, for all he could subjectively establish, many of his beliefs might have been false, he was plagued by doubt. This sent him in search of a method that would enable him to overcome his doubt and rest his beliefs on a secure foundation. In Descartes’s case, what was at issue was not whether his beliefs were warranted or not. For all he knew, his beliefs may very well have been warranted if externalism is true. Rather, Descartes wondered how he could possibly maintain his beliefs in light of his inability to subjectively establish their truth. It would be of no benefit to Descartes to suggest that his beliefs might be warranted by being the results of reliable cognitive faculties. If we cannot maintain beliefs in the absence of subjectively accessible warrant, the possibility of inaccessible warrant won’t provide any assistance in the Cartesian struggle against doubt. 

In my opinion, the case of Descartes provides a key insight into the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemology: The reason why internalists see externalism as a non-starter is because, unless the warrant for one’s beliefs is subjectively accessible, one will not be able to maintain those beliefs at all. Insofar as a subject realizes that they cannot recognize any basis for thinking that their beliefs are true, they will simply refrain from holding those beliefs. This truth, according to internalists, is self-evident upon reflection to any rational thinker.

In light of this internalist position, the externalist insistence on the possibility of subjectively inaccessible warrant is worthless as a response to reflective doubt. The internalist basis for rejecting externalism is not simply the fact that externalist standards for warrant are too low. Rather, it is the fact externalist standards for warrant apply to beliefs that are not possible to maintain upon reflection. The disagreement between internalists and externalists is not about the conditions under which a belief has some commonly agreed upon status called “warrant”. Internalists are concerned with warrant in the sense that subjects can have upon reflection and externalists are not. To this extent, internalists and externalists are talking past one another. 

Addendum: 

Externalists often oppose this kind of internalist position on the grounds that our judgements simply have to bottom out in beliefs that lack subjectively accessible warrant. According to these externalists, perceptual judgements and other basic beliefs cannot be formed on the basis of further subjectively accessible reasons. Consequently, unless we wish to deny the possibility of perceptual judgements that can withstand rational reflection, we must accept the that beliefs can be maintained with subjectively inaccessible warrant.

However, this worry rests on the assumption that beliefs are the only source of subjectively accessible warrant. Internalists can reject this assumption and recognize perceptual experiences, in addition to beliefs, as conceptual states capable of providing subjectively accessible warrant. This enables the internalist to insist that subjectively accessible warrant is necessary for maintaining beliefs upon reflection while also recognizing the possibility of basic beliefs.