Abstract

Instigated by the Gettier problems of 1963, recent epistemological warfare has intensified as yet more epistemologists have begun to recognize how fundamental the differences between epistemic internalism and externalism really are. This dispute about the nature of evidence has expanded to many other philosophical disciplines creating a methodological quagmire through which it is difficult to effectively argue. I show how Bonjour's argument from epistemic responsibility, Kim's subject-changing charges, and Smullyan's parable all fail to overcome this methodological employment of externalism. ;I then determine that the fundamental problem with externalist theory of justification is its inability to perform the epistemological task, because of its alteration of the critical epistemic concepts. I critique Armstrong's and Kornblith's defense of this externalist strategy by exposing them to a rigorous skeptical attack and then diagnose the problem of epistemic externalism as its insistence on viewing knowledge as an object of scientific investigation. I show why this naturalist vision is flawed and why a traditional employment of a priori conceptual analysis is essential if skepticism is to be resisted. I then return to the Gettier problem and explain why it does not invite naturalist reconstruals of knowledge and why epistemology must be prior to the sciences