Internalism locates the justification of a belief in its relation to other beliefs of the cognizer, while externalism locates the justification in the cognitive process of reliability through objective evidence. This debate is at the heart of philosophical inquiry surrounding the definition of knowledge and the criteria for justification.
In the Western philosophical tradition, knowledge is understood as “justified true beliefs”. The reason why having true beliefs is insufficient to say that we have knowledge is that we can have true beliefs by accident. This discussion shows that a belief is epistemically justified if and only if we have good reasons or grounds for thinking it is true. In traditional epistemology, a proposition P is said to be true if it is in fact true, a cognitive agent S believes that P, and S has good reasons or grounds for his belief that P. In other words, we have knowledge if the three elements of justification, truth, and belief are met.
It was Gettier who suggested that the three elements of knowledge, which were widely accepted in traditional Western epistemology, are not sufficient for knowledge. To understand his argument, consider the following example. A cafe is showing a soccer match between South Korea and Japan. I deduce that there are a number of Koreans in the café, and the cheering I hear leads me to believe that Korea has just scored a goal, and indeed, Korea has scored a goal and it is now 1-0. At this point, my belief that South Korea has just scored a goal is justified and true. However, the cheering I actually heard was coming from the office upstairs in the café, and it was from a promotion celebration that took place just as South Korea scored. Therefore, my justified, true belief is not knowledge. In other words, Gettier’s objection is that there are justified true beliefs that are not knowledge. Epistemologists since Gettier have tried to create a justification criterion to solve this problem. In the process, the question has arisen whether the determinants of justification are intrinsic or extrinsic to the cognitive subject.
The basic position of internalism is that the justification of beliefs lies in the relationship between beliefs. For example, when I believe that the Earth is round, the justification for this belief is my belief in the scientific facts and my belief in the photographs of the Earth from space, which are the reasons for my belief that the Earth is round. Thus, internalism holds that it is the other beliefs of the cognizer that determine the justification of a belief. In order for a belief to be justified, the cognitive subject must be able to think about the justifying factors.
The basic position of externalism, on the other hand, is that the justification of beliefs is based on objective grounds, that is, the objective grounds that have undergone a credible cognitive process. For example, suppose I am standing in front of a book and I believe the proposition “There is a book in front of me. Externalists believe that my belief is justified by the objective evidence that I have obtained through a credible cognitive process that I am seeing the book in front of me with my eyes. Some externalists also believe that the justification of beliefs is determined by the causal relationship between facts and beliefs. This view emphasizes that the justification of beliefs must be in relation to the external world, not in a subjective belief system.
The debate between internalism and externalism is more than just a philosophical issue; it requires a deep consideration of practical epistemological perspectives. For example, the question of how data from scientific research can be justified within an internalized belief system, or how such data can be justified through reliable connections to the external world, remains an important issue.
In the end, internalists and externalists are still arguing about the correct epistemological perspective, as each can present a concept of knowledge from their respective positions. This debate is one of the core of philosophical inquiry and plays an important role in how we understand the world and build knowledge, so it’s important that we continue to explore this debate to find better definitions and justifications of knowledge.
