Entitlement: Epistemic Rights without Epistemic Duties?

Abstract

The debate between externalists and internalists in epistemology can be viewed as a disagreement about whether there are epistemic rights (to believe) without corresponding duties or obligations (to justify what is believed). Taking an epistemic right to believe P as an authorization to not only accept P as true but to use P as a positive reason for accepting other propositions, the debate is about whether there are unjustified justifiers. It is about whether there are propositions that provide for others what nothing need provide for them-viz., for thinking them true. I take externalists to be people who believe there are such unjustified justifiers and internalists to be those who deny it. Externalists hold that we are entitled to believe some things for which we have no justification. Some externalists-I happen to be one of them-go farther and say we are not only entitled to believe things we have no to believe, we often, in fact, know things we have no reason to believe. Knowledge, the supreme form of entitlement, requires no justification. This is not to say that it doesn't sometimes have it. Talk of justification and reasons may not be the right way to characterize this disagreement since parties to the dispute tend to use these words in