Radical epistemology, structural explanations, and epistemic weaponry

Abstract

When is a belief justified? There are three families of arguments we typically use to support different accounts of justification: (1) arguments from our intuitive responses to vignettes that involve the concept; (2) arguments from the theoretical role we would like the concept to play in epistemology; and (3) arguments from the practical, moral, and political uses to which we wish to put the concept. I focus particularly on the third sort (3), and specifically on arguments of this sort offered by Clayton Littlejohn in Justification and the Truth-Connection (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012) and Amia Srinivasan in ‘Radical Externalism’ (Philos Rev 129(3): 395–431, 2018) in favour of externalism. I counter Srinivasan’s argument in two ways: (a) first, I show that the internalist’s concept of justification might figure just as easily in the sorts of structural explanation Srinivasan thinks our political goals require us to give; and (b) I argue that the internalist’s concept is needed for a particular political task, namely, to help us build more effective defences against what I call epistemic weapons. I conclude that we should adopt an Alstonian pluralism about the concept of justification.