Ernest Sosa: Externalism :: essays research papers

Ernest Sosa Externalism     Ernest Sosa likes externalism. He thinks that it is intuitively correct.But he must(prenominal) and does agree that it must be clarified in order to keep off certainproblems. So, his mission in this paper is to first define what he calls"Generic Reliabilism," then to show how it is susceptible to certain objections,then to depict a modified version of it, and to show that this new version is,in general, better than its predecessor. Let us look at his argument.     First, we get the unwashed definition of generic reliabilism S isjustified in his whimsey that p at t if the whim is produced by some facultythat commonly produces true smells. Then, we get a friction match of Alvin Goldmansnotions of justification with Sosas revisions. A spirit is strongly justifiediff it is well formed, and by means of a equity conducive process. A belief isweakly justified iff it is "blameless" (not the emerg ence of an intentionalmistake?) just ill-formed, and the believer is not aware that the belief is ill-formed. A belief is superweakly justified iff the process that produces thebelief is un true provided the type did not intentionally come to hold thebelief because it was acquired unreliably. And, finally, a belief has strongmeta-justification iff the subject neither believes that nor can determine ifthe belief is ill-formed (hence the "meta-" prefix), and the subject is aware ofthe process by which he got the belief and that the process is reliable.OK, seems reasonable enough. But, Sosa points out, there are a couple ofscenarios (actually, three, but Sosa concentrates mainly on the two listedbelow) in which these conceptions of justification just do not work. The "newevil demon" problem takes a couple of forms in the article, but what it amountsto is that if a person S attains beliefs through something opposite than his usualfaculties (e.g. senses, reasoning, et c.) like evil demons or random neurologicalstimulators, or whatever, then that persons beliefs are not attained through areliable process (we are assuming that demons are, as usual, not benevolentbearers of truth). But, we do not want to say, or at least Sosa doesnt, thatthe deceived believer is tout ensemble unjustified in his beliefs so, what levelof justification do we assign to his event? If, by some amazing coincidence,the random processes or demons generate a consistent and coherent set of beliefs,then we can say that the subject is weakly and meta- justified. But, t hatsituation is not very likely, and thereof we need the notion of superweak