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Full Idea
How can the fact that a belief is reliably produced make my acceptance of that belief rational and responsible when that fact itself is entirely unavailable to me?
Gist of Idea
If the reliable facts producing a belief are unknown to me, my belief is not rational or responsible
Source
Laurence Bonjour (A Version of Internalist Foundationalism [2003], 2.2)
Book Ref
Bonjour,L/Sosa,E: 'Epistemic Justification' [Blackwells 2003], p.27
A Reaction
This question must rival Pollock's proposal (Idea 8815) as the master argument against externalism. Bonjour is assuming that knowledge has to be 'rational and responsible', but clearly externalists take a more lax view of knowledge.
Related Idea
Idea 8815 Belief externalism is false, because external considerations cannot be internalized for actual use [Pollock]
| 8887 | It is hard to give the concept of 'self-evident' a clear and defensible characterization [Bonjour] |
| 8888 | The concept of knowledge is so confused that it is best avoided [Bonjour] |
| 8889 | Reliabilists disagree over whether some further requirement is needed to produce knowledge [Bonjour] |
| 8890 | If the reliable facts producing a belief are unknown to me, my belief is not rational or responsible [Bonjour] |
| 8891 | My incoherent beliefs about art should not undermine my very coherent beliefs about physics [Bonjour] |
| 8892 | Coherence seems to justify empirical beliefs about externals when there is no external input [Bonjour] |
| 8894 | Coherentists must give a reason why coherent justification is likely to lead to the truth [Bonjour] |
| 8893 | For any given area, there seem to be a huge number of possible coherent systems of beliefs [Bonjour] |
| 8895 | If neither the first-level nor the second-level is itself conscious, there seems to be no consciousness present [Bonjour] |
| 8896 | Conscious states have built-in awareness of content, so we know if a conceptual description of it is correct [Bonjour] |
| 8897 | The adverbial account will still be needed when a mind apprehends its sense-data [Bonjour] |