Justification ithout Aareness A Defense of Epistemic Externalism [Hardcover]

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other good-making features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism.

I. Against Internalism
1. A Dilemma for Internalism
2. No Escape
3. Mentalism
4. Deontologism
II. Defending Externalism
5. Proper Function
6. Defeaters
7. Epistemic Circularity
8. Responding to Skepticism

InJustification Without Awareness, Bergmann offers both powerful criticisms of various internalist accounts of epistemic justification and a sustained exposition and defense of his own externalist alternative. It is one the best books in epistemology that I have read over the past couple of decades and it is a must read for anyone seriously interested in the fundamental metaepistemological debates that dominate contemporary epistemology. --Richard Fumerton,Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews