The mind without, the world within

Abstract

The current debate between internalists and externalists is in many ways quite complex.Not only are the termsuseddifferently in the context of epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics, but a bewildering proliferation of new versions of internalism and externalism have emerged in recent discussions. Consequently, it makes very little sense these days to ask in general whether somebody is an internalist or an externalist, since the answer will depend on the specific kind of internalism or externalism one has in mind. In the present volume, the focus will be on the internalism–externalism debate as it is played out in the context of philosophy of mind. Thus, the internalism in question is the one that, roughly speaking, amounts to the view that a subject’s beliefs and experiences are wholly constituted by what goes on inside the mind of that subject, so that matters in the subject’s natural and cultural environment have no bearing on their content. Externalism, by contrast, is then the rejection of that view. More specifically, however, the centre of attention will be on phenomenological conceptions of the mind-world relation, and the central question asked will be whether classical phenomenology—the philosophical tradition inaugurated by Husserl and continued by such thinkers as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty—is internalist or externalist in orientation. What is the rationale behind compiling a special issue on this topic right now? There are several different reasons. • One is that the very attempt to apply what must be considered a foreign conceptual framework on phenomenological theories of intentionality can be quite