Epistemology Debate The purpose of this research is t

The purpose of this research is to examine the modern internalist/externalist debate in epistemology. The plan of the research will be to set forth the basic philosophical positions taken that define the terms of the debate, and then to discuss how it is being conducted in the modern period. The issue of what we know and how we know what we know is currently centered on the way in which the mind works, either subjectively and intuitively by creating structures of reality and then adjusting such structures by rational processes, or by rationally processing information that arises empirically and objectively from sources outside the intelligence. In the modern period the epistemological enterprise of philosophy is concerned with demonstrating how understanding of knowledge occurs, with the name epistemic justification being attached to the idea of how certain knowledge can arise. The problem of justification is contained within the Regress Problem, which presents a potentially infinite number of logical challenges to the question of how we know what we know: "If your belief is justified, there must be reasons why it is justified. Otherwise, at best you have mere true belief, and this is not enough for justification. But your reasons also must be justified if you want you original belief to be justified" (Introduction, 38). Thus epistemic justification is concerned to find the structure of justification that requires no further justification.

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ubject to some "ground for doubt." However, the conditions under which something is apprehended via sense or memory may be such that ground for doubt is removed; Chisholm refers to this as concurrence, and this idea accounts for the problems associated with perceptions or rational apprehensions that turn out to be wrong. The qualification about conditions, which may be rational or empirical, is an important check on idiosyncratic justification; it is also the content of Chisholm's foundationalism. Chisholm sees a relationship between direct experience of what is apparent to sense or rational faculty and what can be inferred from that experience, under certain conditions of rationality and sense experience. Accordingly, what is apprehended may, if other conditions are appropriate, in fact be known to be known, or epistemically justified. Goldman's perspective is externalist to the degree he holds that conclusions about knowledge must be strongly supported by the basis on which such conclusions are made. For Goldman, the conditions under which assertions and conclusions are made seem to become more important than the rational processes by which they are made: "A theory of justified belief will be a set of principles that specify tr

Category: Philosophy - E