Ernest Sosa: Externalism
Ross Goldberg
PHIL 4311
Dr. Stonewald
Ernest Sosa likes externalism. He thinks that it is intuitively correct.
But he must and does agree that it must be clarified in order to avoid certain
problems. 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 present 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 usual definition of generic reliabilism: S is
justified in his belief that p at t if the belief is produced by some faculty
that usually produces true beliefs. Then, we get a couple of Alvin Goldman's
notions of justification with Sosa's revisions. A belief is strongly justified
iff it is well formed, and by means of a truth conducive process. A belief is
weakly justified iff it is "blameless" (not the result of an intentional
mistake?) but ill-formed, and the believer is not aware that the belief is ill-
formed. A belief is superweakly justified iff the process that produces the
belief is unreliable but the subject did not intentionally come to hold the
belief because it was acquired unreliably. And, finally, a belief has strong
meta-justification iff the subject neither believes that nor can determine if
the belief is ill-formed (hence the "meta-" prefix), and the subject is aware of
the process by which he got the belief and that the process is reliable.
...