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Reliabilism and Brains in Vats

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Abstract

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism.

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Notes

  1. The version of internalism that is the focus of this paper is what Conee and Feldman (2001) call Mentalism. This is to be contrasted with Accessibilism, according to which the features that justify a belief are accessible to the subject. There are indeed important questions about the connection between accessibility and justification, but these cannot be addressed here.

  2. Cohen (1984), Wedgwood (1999, 2002), Dretske (2000), Pryor (2001). See Majors and Sawyer (2005) for detailed overview of this internalist strategy.

  3. The new evil demon problem was introduced in Lehrer and Cohen (1983).

  4. Goldman (1979)

  5. As a qualification, it is unclear, and unlikely, that this argument could be applied to certain a priori beliefs (such as mathematical beliefs) we have as well as beliefs about one’s own mental states. The argument specifically targets beliefs which are sourced in perception. It should therefore be read as focusing on our common, ordinary beliefs about the empirical world.

  6. Cf. Cohen (1984), Sosa (1985), Wedgwood (1999), Dretske (2000), Conee and Feldman (2001).

  7. Note that we are investigating whether E1 and E2 have the same representational content. As we will see, perceptual anti-individualism places restrictions on when two token experiences can be representationally type-identical. However, it is a separate question to ask whether or not E1 and E2 are phenomenally or qualitatively identical. One can be anti-individualist about perceptual representational content, yet still hold that qualia are intrinsic, non-relational properties of the subject (though Cf. Dretske (1995, 1996) for an interesting argument for qualia anti-individualism). None of the present discussion hinges on whether or not Brainean and Actuan share the same qualia, so I will here assume individualism about phenomenal experience.

  8. Burge (2007b, p. 202-203) and (2003, fn 7).

  9. Some have argued that considerations about a scenario in which a subject was envatted just yesterday severely weakens Putnam’s (2000) own refutation of external world skepticism. See, for instance, Wright (1992).

  10. Presumably, B1 and B2 would also differ under this permanent-envatment version of the thought experiment (Cf. Putnam (2002) and Burge (2007a)), but this not our main concern here (though it will become relevant in Section IV.2). The more pressing issue is whether SGP is satisfied, so our attention should be on Brainean and Actuan’s grounds (i.e. their experiences).

  11. Cf. Plantinga (1993), Majors and Sawyer (2005, 2007), Comesaña (2002)

  12. Many of these considerations are highlighted in Burge (2003).

  13. Cf. Goldman (1979).

  14. The inspiration for this scenario arises from Putnam (2000). See also Peacocke (2004, Chap 3).

  15. This point is demonstrated through Putnam (2002) and Burge’s (2007a) famous Twin Earth thought-experiments.

  16. Putnam (2000), p. 394.

  17. Cf. Evans (1982) Chaps 5 and 6.

  18. This does not imply that such demonstrative thoughts are necessarily true. The belief can inaccurately represent which properties the object possesses, but the subject cannot misidentify which object it is that she judges has that property. Demonstrative thoughts are immune to error through misidentification.

  19. Further difficulties arise once we attempt to determine what is expressed by Brainean’s putative first-person concept in B1* (Cf. Evans (1982) Chap. 7.7). I will not address these problems here.

  20. See Burge (2005, p. 50–53) for an objection to Evans’ proposed object-dependency for demonstrative thoughts.

  21. Goldman (1979).

  22. I would like to thank Tony Brueckner, Kevin Falvey, Michael Rescorla, and an anonymous referee at this journal for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Loyola University-New Orleans, 413 Bobet Hall, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Jon Altschul

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Altschul, J. Reliabilism and Brains in Vats. Acta Anal 26, 257–272 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0088-7

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