Why Internalists Need an Enriched Theory of Perceptual and Conceptual Awareness to Escape from Bergmann’s Dilemma

Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. Assuming as internalism does that to have a justified belief, subjects must be aware of the justifiers of the belief and of their relevance to the truth of the belief, Bergmann notes that one is either aware of this relevance conceptually or not. But, says Bergmann, if the required awareness is conceptual, internalism is encumbered with an infinite regress. If it is not—if it is only “weak awareness”—then internalism lacks any dialectical advantage over externalism. In this paper, I explore DePoe’s (2012) defense of the dialectical advantage of weak awareness, and show how the case for its ability to account for awareness of the relevance of the justifiers can be improved by supplementation from a direct realist theory of perception and a theory of concept-formation and application informed by that theory of perception. Too often philosophers treat problems in epistemology—and in philosophy more generally—in isolation from other problems in other areas of their field and their discipline. The dispute between internalists and externalists is one prominent example: it is a dispute about whether knowing subjects need to be aware of the justifiers of their knowledge in order to be justified or in order to know. But both sides of the dispute often assume that the form of awareness available for such a purpose is little more than the introspection of internal mental objects described by representationalist philosophers of perception. While the term “internalism” may bias philosophers towards this interpretation, awareness of internal mental states is not essential to the internalistic view of justification, which only requires that justified subjects have some form of awareness of the justifiers of their beliefs. 1 As BonJour (2002) has pointed out, a direct realist view of perception could allow the internalist to suppose that external perceivable objects also count as justifiers (2002, 223). Others have explored how this supposition could empower answers to the standard objections to internalism. 2 Recently, defenders of internalism have debated another influential objection to internalism by Michael Bergmann (2006). Bergmann’s argument poses a dilemma for internalism, and his critics have responded that neither horn of the dilemma is as damning as it would first appear. But even when these solutions, which involve positing forms of awareness that circumvent Bergmann’s regresses, are rhetorically effective, they do not connect their solutions to known psychological mechanisms. 1 Whereas mentalist internalists assume that only mentally internal objects can serve the role of justifiers, access internalists only require that we have conscious access to whatever serves the role of a justifier (Conee and Feldman, 2001). 2 Bayer (2012) has pointed out that if we assume direct realism, we can explain how on access internalism there are many more consciously accessible justifiers than previously believed, including not only the external objects of perception, but even the past objects of memory (because lessons drawn from direct realism about perception help us to see how the lack of simultaneous conscious access does not rule out the relevant kind of conscious access). This allows the internalist to answer many of the objections to internalism posed by externalists like Goldman (1999, 2009). It is my intention to remedy this problem in the current paper. In order to do this, I will briefly review Bergmann’s statement of his dilemma and then what I take to be the most persuasive attempt of an internalist (DePoe 2012) to answer it. I will then explain why I think the answer falls short, and how I would supplement it by drawing on the same theories of perceptual and conceptual awareness used elsewhere by Bayer (2011, 2012) to defend internalism and foundationalism against other objections.