What is Externalism? Let’s take a simple example. Let’s assume you believe that gold is a metal. If you do, then that means you have the concept gold. But what is your concept based on? This is where externalism and internal/ism disagree. According to externalism, you are having the concept depends essentially on you having been related in the right kind of way to gold itself (you have probably read about it, people have talked to you about it, you may have seen things made from it, and so on). And if there had been no gold around anywhere, then, according to the externalist, you could not have possessed the concept gold. After all, how could you have acquired it? Internalists disagree. Internalists think that you could still have possessed the concept gold even if there had not been any around, so long as your brain was in the right kind of state.
Externalist think of concepts as public rather than private. We both have the concept gold, and both believe that gold is a metal, but we may have somewhat different understandings of what gold is – we may have different beliefs about how well it conducts electricity, or how precious it is, and so on, but it is still gold we are thinking about because of our causal connections to it.
Externalism maintain that in order for an agent to be justified in holding a particular belief, the agent need not have any sort of introspective or cognitive awareness of the grounds that evidentially support her belief. In other word, externalism argues that a belief is justified provided that that belief is the product of a reliable belief-forming process and this process is simply something that takes in certain inputs, and produces beliefs as outputs. In this paper, I will argue that Externalism is a relatively correct theory comparing to internalism. Internalist argues that in order for an agent S to be justified in believing that p at a time t only if S is aware of the J-factos for p at t. Internalism lays down a cognitive awareness component for justified belief; in order for S to be justified in believing that p, S must have some sort of direct introspective or cognitive awareness of the J-factors or grounds that support p. In other words, S must hold the J-factors for p before her mind, as it were. In Internalist theory, all of the factors that determine whether a belief is justified must be factors of which an agent can become aware. That is, for any agent S and belief p, p’s justificatory status is solely dependent upon and determined by factors of which S can become aware. This point of view tend to solve the puzzle of ancient epistemic problem – how do we know if we are not controlled by the evil genius? Despite all the benefits of holding Internalism, this point of view actually is very unrealistic. First of all, if internalism is true, it will exclude all of the children because children cannot be aware of all the beliefs he hold at his current age and that makes his beliefs not justified. But this seems absurd! At least some children, namely premature child, holds beliefs that he actually knows the connection that support it. Secondly, in the real world, people are lousy at identifying the actual J-factors for their beliefs. If Internalism is a correct theory we shall pursuit, the theory itself will knock out a huge chunk of people in the world. In contrary, Externalism denies Interalism. The theory does not require people to aware of the connection that support your belief. In fact, the belief-forming process can be counted as epistemically justified when the beliefs are more than fifty percent because Externalist knows that people are lousy at identifying the actual J-factors for their beliefs; therefore, they are more straightforwardly naturalistic theory of epistemic justification. Indeed, there are some worries for Externalism. The famous one is the BonJour’s Meta-Incoherence Objection where, “Norman, under certain conditions that usually obtain, is a completely reliable clairvoyant with respect to certain kinds of subject matter. He possesses no evidence or reasons of any kind for or against the general possibility of such a cognitive power, or for or against the thesis that he possesses it. One day Norman comes to believe that the President is in New York City, though he has no evidence either for or against this belief. In fact the belief is true and results from his clairvoyant power, under the circumstances in which it is completely reliable” (Laurence BonJour). I would claim that BonJour’s Meta-Incoherence Objection is weak because the Norman’s situation rarely happen to our world. Externalist eliminates the role of personal responsibility and effort from having a justified belief. It is more reasonable and realistic to think that the Externalism is a better theory than Internalism given that the Internalism theory cannot apply its own theory to most of the people.
I believe nothing is flawless. Both theories present its own pros and cons; however, as long as the theory itself can apply over fifty percent in our lives, I would argue that Externalism is relatively correct theory.