In Defense of Weak Inferential Internalism

Abstract

david alexander has argued that inferential (WII), a position which amounts to a qualified endorse - ment of richard Fumerton's controversial principle of inferential justification, is subject to a fatal dilemma: either it collapses into externalism or it must make an arbitrary epistemic distinction between persons who believe the same proposition for the same reasons. In this paper, I argue that the dilemma is a false one, for weak inferential internalism does not entail internalism simpliciter. Indeed, WII is compatible with modest externalism, and so is consis- tent with what armstrong calls t ype II justification, the rejection of which leads to the arbitrary epistemic distinctions to which he rightly objects.