Srinivasan’s Radical Externalism

2024-1 Seminar Epistemology

 

Srinivasan’s Radical Externalism

 

 

1. What’s going on here? The Overall Picture of Radical Externalism

In her paper, Srinivasan presents three epistemologically distinctive cases – ‘Racist Dinner Table,’ ‘Classist College,’ and ‘Domestic Violence’ – in which social hierarchies, discrimination, and power effects are subtly intertwined. She then argues that “externalism has a much easier time of vindicating what I take to be the intuitive verdicts on these cases than does internalism.” [400] In a nutshell, her espousal of externalism is heavily based on her intuitive judgments of each case. Interestingly, most of her intuitions conflict with mine. I will briefly review them and offer my own counterarguments in turn.

2. The Racist Dinner Table Case

Srinivasan explains that internalists hold that justification is solely a matter of a subject’s (nonfactive) mental states, whereas externalists claim that it is at least partly a matter of facts that lie beyond one’s mental state (e.g., a causal connection or a reliable process). [399-400] According to Srinivasan, the Racist Dinner Table case is particularly notable in that it is analogous to BonJour’s Clairvoyant case and nevertheless presents a challenge to internalism, rather than externalism (in fact, all three cases Srinivasan discusses are structured along the same lines).

Case: Nour, like a Clairvoyant, “has nothing that is introspectively available to her—no experiences or phenomenology—that could potentially serve as the grounds for her belief […] And yet Nour’s belief that her host is racist seems eminently justified.” [403]

Pushback 1: but we should distinguish between a justified belief-forming process and a mere bias-forming process. The primary reason Nour’s belief seems justified in the first case is the author’s mention of her belief being true. If Nour’s belief is repeatedly proven wrong, we would consider her to be simply biased. In this scenario, the distinction between justified beliefs and biases is simply determined by whether Nour’s belief is true, not by our traditional notion of justification (whatever it may be). On top of that, the justification of a statement cannot be considered the same as its truth. For instance, while Nour’s belief that “her host is racist” can be false, a more cautious belief like “her host might be racist” could still hold true. However, we will demand the same kind of justification for both cases, regardless of the truth value of the two propositions. Thus, justification plays no role herein, and I think Nour’s case is not to be considered justified.

Pushback 2: it is questionable whether Nour’s belief-forming process was purely subconscious; the author furtively assumes a causal connection between Nour’s belief and her subconscious capacity to detect the subtle cues of her host’s behavior. However, her detection is not directly related to the belief that “her host is racist,” but rather to the belief that “her host’s behavior exhibits traits of racism.” The former belief is buttressed not only by the latter belief but also by a variety of other beliefs such as “her host is speaking and acting of his own free will,” “She is not dreaming,” among others.

3. The Classist College Case

Case: “Charles [in the Classist College Case] and Mary [in the Dogmatist Case] both dismiss this misleading evidence [testimony], despite the fact that neither has available to them the proper explanation of why the evidence is misleading—that the Master is suffering from false consciousness, that the “gallery assistant” is part of the art piece—maintaining their original beliefs.” [405]

Pushback: True, the master’s testimony did not serve as a defeater to Charles’s belief that “he has faced classist discrimination in the college.” However, both we and Charles are aware that the master is too deeply involved in the college to consider his testimony reliable—he has a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of Oxford College, and he has been familiar with this culture for decades. In this regard, Charles can be said to understand why the evidence is misleading. Suppose Charles heard the same testimony from a new professor who is in a situation very similar to his own. Then this testimony might have served as a defeater.

4. The Domestic Violence Case

Case: “Radha’s belief is not merely false, but moreover the product of a convincing, and systematic, patriarchal illusion: that it is men’s place to subordinate women. This illusion […] ensures that Radha has no dependable access to the moral facts of her situation. Radha, despite her own best efforts, is tragically cut off from moral reality.” [399] In this regard, Radha’s case is analogous to Brain in a Vat case and reminds us (as Cohen suggested) the new evil demon problem for externalism. [406] Nevertheless, Radha’s belief is not justified, according to Srinivasan. Therefore, “The internalist who wants to mobilize BRAIN-IN-A-VAT against externalism […] needs to explain just why it is that our intuitions about DOMESTIC VIOLENCE appear to favor externalism over internalism.” [407]

Pushback: Srinivasan’s challenge to internalism bewilders me because my intuition strongly indicates that Radha’s belief is truly justified, just as the Brain in a Vat case. First, in Radha’s case, it is quite natural to assume that getting opinions from people around her (i.e., Krishnan, her parents, elders, and friends) is generally regarded as a reliable resource; their opinions constitute a bunch of her justified beliefs and her knowledge. In short, I don’t know why it is problematic to say that her belief relies on this generally reliable resource and is thereby justified. Second, Srinivasan argues that “once we draw the distinction between justification on one hand, and excusedness or blamelessness on the other, it feels intuitive, I think, to say that Radha’s belief meets the conditions for the latter, but not the former.” [399] I, on the contrary, think that own’s blameless belief already presupposes that the very belief is justified (but not vice versa). So, it is not enough to appeal her intuition; she must elucidate the conceptual differences in the first place.