La teoría de la construcción

Finally, let us now revisit the third argument for internalism, the argument from belief- regulation:

(1) S’s justificatory status is fully determined by factors that enable S to regulate her beliefs.

(2) Only factors internal to S could enable S to regulate her beliefs.

(3) Therefore, S’s justificatory status is fully determined by factors internal to S. [Follows from (1) and (2).]

As you might suspect, the vulnerable premise here is (2). In fact, I cannot even see that there is any prima facie case for it being true, and counterexamples are easy to find. Sally* constitutes one such counterexample: She can use her notebook to regulate her beliefs in the relevant sense, even though her notebook is clearly not internal to her.

As before, however, it would be premature to conclude that the right premise to replace (2) with is:

(2Esimple) Only factors epistemically accessible to S could enable S to regulate her

beliefs.

Again, it’s not that I think this is wrong. It is true, I think, that only factors that are epistemically accessible could enable one to regulate one’s beliefs. But we need a more informative account of what it is that determines an agent’s justificatory status – we need an account that differentiates between, e.g., Bob* and Ray*. So, we should replace (2) not with the simplistic (2Esimple), but with a premise that respects the gradability of

epistemic access:

(2E) Factors could enable S to regulate her beliefs only to the extent that those factors are epistemically accessible to S.

(2E) asserts that there is a determination-relationship between, roughly, the extent to which S would (without doing any significant investigation) consult some factor F when doing so makes an epistemic difference, on the one hand, and the extent to which F enables S to regulate her beliefs, on the other. (2E) is plausible because it seems that the extent to which something can regulate one’s beliefs depends on the extent to which it would be consulted in the right situations and the extent to which this consulting wouldn’t require one to do any significant investigation. Otherwise put, an optimally belief-regulating factor would be such that one would consult it whenever it makes an epistemic difference, and such that one wouldn’t have to do any significant investigation in order to do so.35

35 _{A potential problem with (2E) is that part of what determines one’s degree of epistemic access}

Making analogous modifications as we did when we revisited the argument from possession, the argument from belief-regulation now goes like this:

(1E)S’s justificatory status is fully determined by factors that enable S to regulate her beliefs and the extent to which those factors enable S to regulate her beliefs. (2E)Factors could enable S to regulate her beliefs only to the extent that those factors

are epistemically accessible to S.

(3E)Therefore, S’s justificatory status is fully determined by factors that are epistemically accessible to S and the extent to which those factors are epistemically accessible to S. [Follows from (1E) and (2E).]

Again, (3E) is simply externalist accessibilism. So, if the argument from belief-regulation is distinct from the argument from possession, as I am inclined to think, we have yet another internalist argument for externalist accessibilism. If, on the other hand, the argument from belief-regulation is just a version of the argument from possession, we have now shown that the externalist accessibilist modification of the latter is applicable also to the former. Either way we have further support for externalist accessibilism.

Let us take stock. None of the three arguments for internalism that I discussed in section 2 are sound, for there are clear counterexamples to the arguments’ premises. However, all of the arguments can be easily modified to support externalist accessibilism, the view I outlined in the last section. So, we began with three arguments that all seemed to support

one is able to justify. Since what one is able to justify doesn’t seem to have any direct relation to belief-regulation, one might worry that factors can regulate to a greater or lesser extent than they are epistemically accessible. This, I think, just goes to show that (1) (and thus (1E) below) needs to be modified so as to account for the fact – for I take it to be a fact – that an agent’s justificatory status depends not only on what enables her to regulate her beliefs, but also on what enables her to justify her beliefs to others. I haven’t included this revision of (1) in the main text since it is not among the main points I want to make in an already too long section.

internalism. But when properly modified in light of counterexamples, all three arguments turn out not to support internalism in any form. Rather, they all support externalist accessibilism, an externalist theory of what determines an agent’s justificatory status.