Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In my talk I present two critical voices raised against internalism which share an interesting common feature. Hilary Kornblith and Timothy Williamson have, separately, formed evil daemon like-arguments in which they claim that it is possible for the subject to make a mistake in reasoning, in result of which she has a belief that is wildly unsupported by her evidence, in such a way that she is in principle unable to discover her mistake. This puts internalist in a difficult situation. One bad solution is to admit that such a person has justification. The other one – to deny such a person justification and adopt a further condition of “cognitive sanity”. However, this requirement goes against the very heart of internalism, namely that all factors determining subject's justification in her belief must be accessible to the subject. First, I establish a crucial common denominator of Williamson and Kornblith's arguments: that the subject must be unable to discover the fact that she made a mistake. Second, I analyse a recent answer to Kornblith's argument given by Andrew Spear and find it unsuccessful. Finally, I present how internalist can resist Kornblith and Williamson's arguments: by pointing out a problem with the evil daemon scenarios devised by Williamson and Kornblith. The solution is that what is needed for such an evil daemon to delude the subject successfully---at the same time will utterly debilitate her reasoning abilities in general. Thus, internalist can resist these arguments by claiming that such an evil daemon is impossible.