Must Epistemic Values Conflict?

Abstract

In his rich and expansive paper, Crispin Wright argues that the introduction of skeptical scenarios does not move the needle in the debate between internalist and externalist accounts of perceptual justification. To evaluate whether a subject in a sceptical scenario is justified, we need to evaluate the relative importance of different epistemic values. But the disagreement between the internalist and externalist can be traced back to a difference in which epistemic values they prioritize. Internalists, who value rational coherence, argue that an agent in a skeptical scenario ought to align her beliefs with her evidence, and therefore ought to believe that the world is as it seems. Externalists, who value the acquisition of knowledge, argue that an agent in a skeptical situation ought not believe that the world is as it seems because doing so will lead her into error. In these comments, I suggest that reframing some aspects of the dialectic reveals options that Wright does not consider. Crucially, if one adopts an externalist view of perceptual experience alongside an internalist conception of justification--a combination of commitments taken on by many metaphysical disjunctivists--one can endorse both epistemic values of rationality and knowledge and therefore escape the stalemate that Wright describes.