Internalism Explained* Ralph Wedgwood

1. The word ‘rational’ is used in many ways. But when the word is used in the way that is most common among philosophers, the following intuition seems compelling.

Consider two possible worlds, w1 and w2. In both worlds, you have exactly the same experiences, apparent memories, and intuitions, and in both worlds you go through exactly the same processes of reasoning, and form exactly the same beliefs. In this case, it seems, exactly the same beliefs are rational in both worlds, and exactly the same beliefs are irrational in both worlds.

Now suppose that in w1 you are bedevilled by an evil demon who ensures that many of your experiences are misleading, with the result that many of the beliefs that you hold in w1 are false. In w2, on the other hand, almost all your experiences are veridical, with the result that almost all the beliefs that you hold in w2 are true. Intuitively, this makes no difference at all. Exactly the same beliefs are rational and irrational in both worlds.1 This intuition seems to support an “internalist” conception of rational belief. According to this conception, the rationality of a belief supervenes purely on “internal facts” about the thinker’s mental states — in this example, on facts that hold in both these two possible worlds w1 and w2, not on facts about the external world that vary between w1 and w2. Moreover, this seems to be a completely general feature of rationality, since a parallel claim seems plausible with respect to rational decisions or choices as well. When we assess a decision as rational or irrational, we are assessing it on the basis of its relation to the agent’s beliefs, desires, and other such mental states — not on the basis of its relation to facts about the external world that could vary while those mental states remained unchanged.2 This also seems to be a special feature of rationality, in contrast to other ways of evaluating beliefs and decisions. All the other ways of evaluating beliefs and decisions — for example, as “correct” or “incorrect”, “advisable” or “inadvisable”, and so on — are externalist evaluations. What is distinctive of “rationality” (at least as the term is most commonly used by philosophers) is that it is an internalist

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evaluation. Thus, internalism with respect to rationality seems to have considerable intuitive support. However, this intuitive support would be undermined if we cannot give an adequate explanation of internalism. Specifically, we must explain exactly which facts about a thinker count as these “internal facts” upon which the rationality of a belief or decision supervenes. We must also explain why rationality should supervene on internal facts in this way. According to the standard version of internalism, these “internal facts” are defined as those facts that one is in a position to know “by reflection alone”.3 Many proponents of this standard version of internalism attempt to explain why internalism should be true by claiming that to say that a belief or decision is “rational” is just to say that in holding that belief or making that decision, the thinker is proceeding in a “cognitively blameless” fashion.4 In my view, this standard version of internalism is open to fatal objections. The claim that rationality is just a matter of “cognitive blamelessness” does not provide an adequate explanation of internalism;5 and anyway, once “internal facts” are defined in this way, internalism is just not true.6 But I shall not rehearse these objections to the standard version of internalism here. Instead, I shall just outline a new version of internalism, which provides a better explanation of what exactly these “internal facts” are, and of why it is that the rationality of beliefs and decisions supervenes on them. As I have remarked, if internalism is true, then it applies just as much to rational decision as to rational belief. However, the question of whether or not internalism is true has chiefly been discussed by epistemologists, rather than by theorists of practical reason. For this reason, I shall focus exclusively on rational belief here, and ignore rational decision altogether. But this is a purely stylistic choice on my part. All my arguments would work just as well if they focused on rational decision instead of rational belief.

2. In what follows, I shall use the phrase ‘belief revision’ broadly, so that it includes not only coming to hold a new belief, but also abandoning or reaffirming an old belief. Even if a belief is not currently being formed or reaffirmed, one may still hold that belief as a background belief — 3

that is, as a standing belief stored in propositional memory. To simplify the discussion here, I shall focus purely on what it is for a belief revision to be rational, not on what it is for background beliefs to be rational.7 It is often claimed that “beliefs aim at the truth.” Clearly, this claim is metaphorical, and it is obscure exactly how this metaphor is to be interpreted. But I shall assume that there is some reasonable interpretation on which it is true to say that whenever one revises one’s beliefs, one is thereby pursuing some aim. It does not matter for my purposes exactly what aim one is thereby pursuing. But to fix ideas, suppose that whenever one revises one’s beliefs, by forming or reaffirming or abandoning one’s belief in p, one is pursuing — that is, trying to achieve — the aim of believing p if and only if p is true. How is one to try to achieve this aim, of believing this proposition p if and only if p is true? To try to achieve this aim, one must possess and exercise certain general abilities or capacities. Specifically, each of the abilities that one must exercise, in order to pursue this aim, is an ability to revise one’s beliefs in a certain way whenever one is in a certain related condition. For example, one such ability might be the ability to come to believe p whenever one sees with one’s own eyes that p is the case. To count as “exercising” this ability, however, it would surely not be enough if it were simply a fluke that one came to believe p at the same time as one sees with one’s own eyes that p is the case. It must also be the case that one comes to believe p precisely because one sees with one’s own eyes that p is the case, and because this belief has the same content — p — as what one sees with one’s own eyes.8 In general, when one exercises such an ability, one revises one’s beliefs in the relevant way in response to the fact that one is in the relevant related condition. As I shall use the phrase, when one exercises an ability of this sort, one is following, or being guided by, a rule — specifically, by the rule that directs one to revise one’s beliefs in that way in response to the fact that one is in the relevant condition. But which rules is one to follow, in order to pursue the aim of believing p (the proposition in question) if and only if p is true? It would be unhelpful here to say that one should just follow the rule: believe p if and only if p is true. One could not try to achieve this aim by means of 4

following this rule. Following this rule just is achieving the aim. We need to see what rules one could follow in order to try to achieve that aim. That is, we need to see what rules there are such that (if all goes well) one could achieve that aim by means of following those rules. Among the rules that one could follow will be certain basic rules. “Basic rules” are analogous to “basic actions”. Basic actions are actions that one performs, but not by means of performing any other actions.9 Basic rules are rules that one follows directly, not by means of following any other rules. If one follows any rules at all, then one must follow some basic rules. Now suppose that there are some such basic rules that one “should” follow, in revising one’s beliefs, in order to pursue the aim of believing p (the proposition in question) if and only if p is true. Admittedly, it is not clear what sense of ‘should’ is being used here. I shall return to this question later. But suppose that there are some such basic rules. Then, I propose, these are the rules that it is rational to follow. A belief revision is rational just in case it directly results from one’s following some of these basic rules.10 This proposal may explain another common intuition about rationality. Intuitively, the fact that one’s belief is true, or counts as knowledge, may be purely a matter of luck; but the fact that one’s belief is rational cannot be purely a matter of luck — it is something that lies within one’s control. One way of explaining this distinction, between what “may be a matter of luck” and what “lies within one’s control”, is based on the notion of “basic actions”. If one is able to perform a certain basic action, then whether or not one performs that basic action lies within one’s control.

On the other hand, even if one is able to bring about a certain further result by means of performing that basic action, whether or not one actually brings about that result may be purely a matter of luck.11 So if rationality is a matter of following basic rules, this could explain why rationality cannot be a matter of luck. According to my definition, a “non-basic rule” is a rule that one follows by means of following some other rule. For example, consider the following rule: “Add salt when the water starts boiling”. If one follows this rule, then one adds salt to the boiling water, precisely because the water is boiling. One’s adding the salt is explained by — is a response to — the fact that the water is boiling. However, it may be that the process whereby one’s action of adding the salt is 5

explained by, or responds to, the fact that the water is boiling can itself be analysed, even at the folk-psychological level of explanation, into a series of sub-processes. For example, perhaps the proximate explanation of one’s attempt to add the salt is not the fact that the water is boiling, but rather one’s belief that the water is boiling. Similarly, perhaps the proximate explanation of one’s belief that the water is boiling is not the fact that the water is boiling, but one’s having an experience that represents the water as boiling. In forming this belief in response to having this experience, one is exercising an ability or following a rule — specifically, a rule that directs one to form the belief that the water is boiling, in response to having an experience that represents the water as boiling. Similarly, when one decides to add the salt, in response to one’s forming the belief that the water is boiling, one is following some other rule (or set of rules). In this way, the process of one’s following the rule “Add salt when the water starts boiling” is constituted by a series of sub-processes, including (among other things) the processes of one’s following these other rules. So, the rule “Add salt when the water starts boiling” is not a basic rule. One follows this rule by means of following other rules. On the other hand, for example, consider the rule “Believe p, if one has an experience as of p’s being the case, and one has no special reason to distrust one’s experiences”. If this is a “basic” rule, then the process of one’s following this rule cannot be analysed, at the folk- psychological level of explanation, into a series of sub-processes that include one’s following any other rule. No doubt, at a “subpersonal” level of explanation, the process of one’s following this rule can be analysed into numerous sub-processes, perhaps involving various subpersonal modules’ computing various algorithms. But this is not the sort of explanation that we are concerned with here. We are concerned with folk-psychological explanations. By this, I mean explanations that have the following two features. First, these explanations refer to mental states, like beliefs and desires, of the sort that are referred to in everyday psychological discourse. Second, these explanations make a certain way of revising one’s beliefs intelligible, as the sort of thing that we can readily imagine someone in the circumstances finding persuasive or compelling. At this level of explanation, one’s having an experience that represents the water as boiling is the proximate explanation of one’s forming the belief that the water is boiling.12 There are no 6

intervening steps that can be captured at this folk-psychological level of explanation.13 When a correct folk-psychological explanation of a belief revision includes all the intervening steps that can be captured at the folk-psychological level, let us say that it is a “fully- articulated” explanation. If one follows a basic rule, and that rule directs one to revise one’s beliefs in a certain way in response to the fact that one is in a certain condition, then a fully- articulated explanation of that belief revision will identify that fact as the proximate explanation of that belief revision.

3. As I shall now argue, whenever a thinker revises her beliefs through following a rule, a fully-articulated folk-psychological explanation of that belief revision will always identify the proximate explanation of that belief revision with some fact about the thinker’s mental states. Some philosophers may object that it is surely an empirical question whether it is ever correct to explain a belief revision directly on the basis of an external, non-mental fact. Certainly, it is an empirical question exactly what sorts of facts can explain a belief revision. But there may still be certain philosophical limits on which such explanations count as correct fully-articulated folk-psychological explanations of the relevant sort. Thus, I am not denying that the formation of a belief can ever be explained in terms of non-mental facts. There may certainly be correct non-folk-psychological explanations that identify a non-mental fact as the proximate explanation of why one formed a belief. For example, scientists might discover that a certain brain state always causes the thinker to believe that he is about to die. But this would not be a folk-psychological explanation of the relevant sort. It would not make one’s forming this belief intelligible as the sort of thing that we can readily imagine someone in the circumstances finding persuasive or compelling. From a folk-psychological perspective, the belief would still seem opaque and hard to understand. I am also not denying that it could be the case, for example, that someone’s coming to believe that I once lived in Malaysia may be explained by the fact that I told her that I once lived in Malaysia — which is presumably a fact about the external world. This explanation may be quite correct. It is just not a “fully-articulated” explanation. It is intuitively clear that if this is a correct 7

folk-psychological explanation, there must also be a more detailed correct folk-psychological explanation, in which the link between my telling her that I once lived in Malaysia and her coming to believe that I once lived in Malaysia is mediated by intervening facts about her mental states. Perhaps, for example, in this more detailed explanation, her coming to believe that I once lived in Malaysia is directly explained by her having the belief that I told her that I once lived in Malaysia (along with the fact that she had no reason to regard my assertion as insincere, and every reason to believe that if my assertion is sincere it is probably true); and this belief (that I told her that I once lived in Malaysia) is itself explained by her having an experience as of my telling her that I once lived in Malaysia, which is in turn explained by my actually telling her that I once lived in Malaysia. Suppose that I claim that someone’s forming a certain belief is explained by a certain external fact, in a context in which it is unclear how there could be any more detailed correct explanation in which the link between that external fact and the formation of the belief is mediated by intervening facts about the believer’s mental states. For example, suppose that I say, “I once lived in Malaysia, so Janet Reno believes that I once lived in Malaysia”. You would be reluctant to accept this explanation unless it could be made clear how this link, between the fact that I once lived in Malaysia and Reno’s believing that I once lived in Malaysia, could be mediated by intervening facts about Reno’s mental states. You would want to ask, “But how does Reno know anything about you at all? Did you meet her and talk about your childhood? Did she ask the FBI to run a background check on you for some reason? Or what?” This point applies even to perceptual beliefs. Suppose that I claim “Sarah believes that the flowers in front of her are pink because the flowers are pink”, while simultaneously also claiming that this link, between the flowers’ being pink and Sarah’s believing that the flowers are pink, is not mediated by any further facts about Sarah’s mental states. If these claims are correct, then either Sarah has no perception or experience that represents the flowers in any way, or else, if she has such a perception or experience, it makes absolutely no difference to whether or not she forms this belief. But then how can this explanation make this belief intelligible, as the sort of thing that we can readily imagine someone finding persuasive or compelling in the circumstances?14 How 8

exactly does the mere fact that the flowers are pink make it persuasive or compelling for Sarah to form precisely this belief, rather than some other belief, or indeed any belief at all? If we want to know why Sarah found it compelling to form this belief, the most plausible answer is surely to say something like: “Sarah found it compelling to form this belief because she could see that those flowers were pink (or: because it looked to her as though those flowers were pink)”.15 In general, then, an explanation of a belief revision that appeals to an external fact can be a correct folk-psychological explanation only if there is also a “fully-articulated” explanation in which the link between that external fact and that belief revision is mediated by intervening facts about the believer’s mental states. So, in any “fully-articulated” explanation, the proximate explanation of the belief revision is not an external fact, but some fact about the believer’s mental states.16 Typically, this proximate explanation consists of the experiences, apparent memories, intuitions or beliefs that are the reasons for which one revised one’s beliefs in that way, along with the absence from one’s set of mental states of certain sorts of defeating or countervailing reasons. It is striking how sharply beliefs contrast with experiences on this point. The proximate folk- psychological explanation of an experience typically does involve an external fact: “The body was lying there right in front of her, in broad daylight, and her eyes were wide open, so of course she saw it”. These explanations never appeal to any “reason” for which one has that experience. There is one final move available to the externalist here. The externalist may concede that correct fully-articulated folk-psychological explanations always identify the proximate explanation of the formation of a belief with some fact concerning one’s mental states. But he may insist that in some cases, these mental states include so-called “factive mental states”, like the state of knowing that p is the case, or seeing that p is the case. The defining mark of a “factive” mental state is that it must consist in standing in some relation to a true proposition. If one knows or sees that p is the case, then p must actually be true. Internalists have always excluded such “factive mental states” from the inventory of “internal” states that determine the rationality of beliefs.17

For many purposes, it is harmless to say that these “factive states” are mental states. However, such factive states cannot be the proximate explanations of the formation of beliefs in correct fully-articulated folk-psychological explanations. Suppose that we want to explain why a 9

thinker comes to believe p. One candidate explanation identifies the proximate explanation of the thinker’s coming to believe p as the fact that the thinker knows q; another candidate explanation identifies this proximate explanation as the fact that she believes q. In this case, if either explanation is correct, it is the second explanation not the first. It is highly plausible that the thinker’s knowing q is partially constituted by the thinker’s believing q; and if the thinker had merely believed q, and not known q, she would still have come to believe p, in exactly the same way that we are trying to explain. So, the thinker’s knowing q has the effect of producing the belief in p only because her knowing q is partially constituted by her believing q. This seems to show that it is the thinker’s believing q, not her knowing q, that really explains her having the belief in p that we are trying to explain.18 This is an application of a plausible general principle about explanation. If one fact is partially constituted by a second,19 and a certain effect would still have been produced even if the second fact had obtained and the first fact had not, then if either fact explains that effect, it is the second fact rather than the first. The first fact contains elements that are irrelevant to explaining the effect; it is the second fact that really does the work in explaining that effect.20 A parallel argument applies to other “factive states” as well.21 It seems then that correct fully-articulated folk-psychological explanations always identify the proximate explanation of a belief revision with some fact about the believer’s mental states, not including “factive mental states” of the kind that I have just discussed. Let us call such facts “internal facts”.

As I explained earlier, if one follows a basic rule, and that rule directs one to revise one’s beliefs in a certain way in response to a certain fact, then a correct fully-articulated explanation will identify that fact as the proximate explanation of that belief revision. So, these basic rules will only ever direct one to revise one’s beliefs in response to such “internal facts”. Let us also say that the fact that a certain belief revision is explained by certain “internal facts” of this kind is itself an “internal fact” of this kind. Then, for each of these rules, whether or not one is following the rule, on a given occasion, depends purely on these “internal facts” about one’s mental states. 4. I have not yet explained why internalism is true. Even if, as I have just argued, “basic rules” only ever direct one to revise one’s beliefs in response to “internal facts” of this kind, it 10

could still be that what makes these rules the rules that one “rationally should” follow is some external fact about these rules — such as the fact that these rules are highly reliable at yielding true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. As I shall put it, this position would combine “belief internalism” with “rule externalism”. The closest parallel in the literature to my argument for belief internalism is the “refutation of belief externalism” that is given by John Pollock and Joseph Cruz.22 After giving their refutation of belief externalism, Pollock and Cruz turn to “rule externalism”. Specifically, they consider the claim that the “basic rules” that we rationally should follow are those rules that are as a matter of fact most reliable at reaching the truth, “regardless of whether we know these facts about reliability”. They reply to this claim as follows:23

What could the point of this claim be? It cannot be taken as a recommendation about how to reason, because it is not a recommendation anyone could follow. We can only alter our reasoning in response to facts about reliability if we are apprised of those facts.

Here, Pollock and Cruz seem to infer from the premiss ‘We can only alter our reasoning in response to facts about reliability if we are apprised of those facts’ to the conclusion ‘No one can follow the recommendation to reason in the most reliable way’. If this inference were valid, then we could also infer from the premiss ‘We can only add salt to the water in response to the fact that the water has started boiling if we are apprised of the fact that the water has started boiling’ to the conclusion ‘No one can follow the recommendation to add salt when the water starts boiling’. But that inference cannot be valid. Even if the premiss is true, it is obviously possible to follow the recommendation to add salt when the water starts boiling. Pollock and Cruz seem to assume that a “recommendation that someone could follow” must be a recommendation that we can always follow whenever it applies to us. But how many recommendations are there of which that is true? Take the simplest of logical precepts: “From ‘p & q’ infer p”. We are not always able to follow this recommendation: some conjunctions are too complex to be recognized as such; or, more simply, we might suddenly die, or go insane, or fall asleep, before we have completed the inference; and so on. The only general recommendations that we can always follow, whenever they apply to us, are recommendations that are specifically 11

restricted to those cases in which we are able to follow them — for example, “From ‘p & q’ infer p, whenever you are able to follow this recommendation”. But recommendations of this sort might be externalist recommendations, such as “Form your beliefs by reliable methods, whenever you are able to follow this recommendation”. So the idea of a recommendation that we are always able to follow does not support internalism. To support internalism, we need a different idea — the idea of a recommendation that we follow directly, not by means of following any other recommendation. As I explained earlier, when one follows a rule, one is exercising an ability that one has, to revise one’s beliefs in a certain way in response to being in a certain corresponding condition; one’s disposition to revise one’s beliefs in that way, in response to being in that condition, has been activated. If the rule is a basic rule, then the activation of that disposition is not mediated by one’s following any other rule. But we can still ask what explains why one has that disposition at that time. I proposed earlier that the rules that it is rational for one to follow, in revising one’s beliefs with respect to a proposition p, are precisely those rules that one “should” follow in order to pursue the aim of believing p if and only if p is true. Intuitively, however, it seems that for rationality, it is not enough if it is simply a fluke that one is disposed to follow the rules that one should follow. It must be the case that one is disposed to follow these rules precisely because they are the rules that one should follow: this disposition must be sensitive to, or be explained by, the fact that these are the rules that one should follow.24 Under favourable conditions, one’s disposition to follow certain rules, in revising one’s beliefs about p, may indeed be sensitive to the fact that these rules are reliable ways of reaching the truth. Intuitively, however, one’s disposition to follow these rules could not be directly sensitive to that fact. It could only be indirectly sensitive to that fact, by means of being sensitive to some other fact. This is because a similar point applies to the explanation of one’s disposition to follow a certain rule as to the explanation of one’s forming a certain belief. A correct fully- articulated folk-psychological explanation of this disposition will always identify, as the proximate explanation of that disposition, some internal fact concerning one’s mental states.25 Perhaps, for 12

example, one is disposed to follow a certain rule because one believes that the rule is a reliable way to reach the truth. Or perhaps one is disposed to follow the rule simply because one possesses certain concepts, and a disposition to follow the rule is a necessary consequence of possessing those concepts. At all events, the proximate explanation of this disposition is an internal fact, not a fact about the external world. This suggests the following interpretation of the term ‘should’, as it appeared in my proposal that the rules that it is rational for you to follow, in revising your beliefs with respect to p, are the rules that you “should” follow, given the aim of believing p if and only if p is true. You are following the rules that you “should” follow, in this sense, only if the fact that you “should” follow these rules is the proximate explanation of your disposition to follow them.26 If the proximate explanation of your disposition to follow a rule must itself be an “internal” fact concerning your mental states, then the fact that you “should” follow a certain rule must also be such an “internal” fact. Let us also say that the fact that a disposition to follow a rule is explained by such an “internal fact” is itself an “internal fact”. Then, we should conclude, if my proposal is correct, the rationality of a belief revision supervenes purely on “internal facts” about the believer.

5. Thus, my proposal about the rules of rational belief revision, along with these theses about folk-psychological explanation, explains which facts about a thinker count as the relevant “internal facts”, and also explains why it is that the rationality of belief revisions supervenes on them. The intuitive support that internalism enjoys is not undermined: internalism can be adequately explained.

* An earlier draft of this paper was presented to the philosophy department at Stanford University. I thank the members of that audience, and also Steve Yablo, Tim Williamson, James Pryor, John Gibbons, and Alexander Bird, for helpful comments. 1 Several epistemologists have proposed theories that are incompatible with this intuition (at least assuming that a belief is “justified” if and only if it is rational). See e.g. Timothy Williamson, “Knowledge as Evidence”, Mind 106 (1997), 717–41, and Alvin Goldman, “What is Justified Belief?” in George Pappas, ed., Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), and “Strong and Weak Justification”, Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), 51–69. Even Goldman, however, felt the pull of this intuition, when he suggested that the rules that we ought to follow, in forming and revising our beliefs, are the rules that are most reliable in “normal worlds” — that is, those worlds in which our general beliefs are true; see his 13

Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 107–09. 2 This formulation is designed to be compatible with externalism with respect to mental content — that is, with the view that the content of a thinker’s mental states does not supervene on narrow, intrinsic properties of the thinker alone, but may also depend on the thinker’s relations to her environment. For the classic argument in favour of externalism with respect to mental content, see Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, reprinted in his Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 3 James Pryor, “Highlights of Recent Epistemology”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (March 2001), § 3.1. This definition of “internal facts” is not universally accepted. In “Internalism Defended” (forthcoming in an anthology on internalism and externalism edited by Hilary Kornblith), Earl Conee and Richard Feldman define internalism as the view that the rationality of a belief is determined by the believer’s “internal states”. They distinguish two accounts of these “internal states”: “accessibilism” defines the believer’s “internal states” as states to which the believer has a special sort of epistemic access, while “mentalism” defines these “internal states” simply as the believer’s mental states. Conee and Feldman tentatively prefer mentalism over accessibilism. Ernest Sosa draws a similar contrast between “Chisholmian internalism” and “Cartesian internalism” in “Skepticism and the Internal / External Divide”, The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, ed. J. Greco and E. Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 147. 4 For an illuminating discussion of the possibility of explaining internalism in this way, see William Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), Essay 8. 5 It is doubtful whether this claim — that epistemic rationality or justification is just a matter of “epistemic blamelessness” — entails that internalism is true; on this point, see especially Goldman, “Internalism Exposed”, Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999), 271–93. Moreover, this claim actually seems to be false. This is because the claim overlooks the distinction between justification and excuse. Even if an action is not justified at all, the action can be “blameless” because it is excusable. Similarly, a belief can be blameless because it is excusable, even if it is not in any way justified or rational. For this point, see James Pryor, “Highlights of Recent Epistemology”, §4.3. Alvin Plantinga also makes much of the fact that some very strange epistemic practices may be “blameless”, if they result from brain damage or the like; see his Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 39. 6 The main reason for this is that, for every member of the set of facts that determine whether or not a belief is rational, it is not a necessary feature of that fact that one is in a position to know that fact by reflection alone. (For some powerful arguments for this point, see Williamson, “Cognitive Homelessness”, Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996), 554–73, and “Evidence and Scepticism”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000), 613–28.) Thus, the following case seems possible. In both w1 and w2, you believe p on the basis of certain reasons, but in w1 you are in a position to know by reflection alone that you believe p on the basis of those reasons, while in w2 you are not in a position to know this; otherwise you are in just the same mental states in both w1 and w2. So, according to the standard version of internalism, the fact that you believe p on the basis of these reasons may be part of what makes the belief rational in w1, but it cannot be part of what makes the belief rational in w2. Hence, this version of internalism must say that it could be the case that this belief is rational in w1 but not rational in w2. But then the fact that you are in a position to know about the basis for your belief in w1 is itself one of the facts on which the rationality of the belief supervenes. The possibility of higher-order access to these facts is not merely a consequence of these facts’ determining the belief’s rationality. It is itself one of the facts that determines the belief’s rationality. So, if there is a set of facts that determine whether or not a belief is rational, then for every fact F that belongs to that set of facts, that set must include, not just F, but also the fact that one is in a position to know F by reflection alone, the fact that one is in a position to know by reflection alone that one is in a position to know F by reflection alone, and so on, ad infinitum. This makes it doubtful whether there is any set of facts that determines whether or not any belief is rational at all. 7 The notions of a rational background belief and of a rational belief revision are connected in the following way. So long as it is rational for a thinker to hold a certain background belief, then no belief revision on the part of the thinker will be irrational merely because it is based on that background belief. I focus on belief revisions here, not because I doubt that internalism is true of 14

background beliefs as well, but purely because background beliefs introduce further complications that I cannot pause to analyse here. For an illuminating discussion of when such background beliefs are rational, see Alan Millar, Reasons and Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), chapter 6. 8 This is still only a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, for exercising the ability in question. To get a sufficient condition, we would somehow have to rule out cases of “deviant causal chains”; see Donald Davidson, “Freedom to Act”, reprinted in his Essays on Action and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 78–79. I am optimistic that this problem can be solved, but I cannot attempt to solve it here. 9 On the concept of “basic actions”, see especially Arthur Danto, “Basic Actions”, reprinted in Alan White, ed., The Philosophy of Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 43–58. 10 Much more needs to be said about this conception of rationality. But I shall not go into these questions here. For a more detailed account of rationality, see my “The A Priori Rules of Rationality”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (1999), 113–31. 11 This is, of course, only one way of distinguishing between what “may be a matter of luck” and what “lies in one’s control” — or, more precisely, perhaps, what “lies in one’s direct control”. There are many other ways of understanding this distinction on which non-basic actions may sometimes be “within one’s control” and one’s performance of a basic action may sometimes be “a matter of luck”. 12 I am assuming here that if the process of one’s revising one’s beliefs through following a rule can be analysed into a series of sub-processes (at the folk-psychological level of explanation), then the final member of this series of sub-processes must be the process of one’s exercising some ability for revising one’s beliefs — that is, the process of one’s following some other rule. It follows that the process of one’s following a “basic rule” cannot be analysed (at the folk- psychological level of explanation) into any sub-processes at all. This is why, if the rule in question really is a “basic” rule, one’s having an experience that represents the water as boiling is the proximate explanation of one’s forming the belief that the water is boiling. 13 I should point out that I am using the terms ‘explain’ and ‘explanation’ in a systematically ambiguous way. When I speak of giving an “explanation” of why internalism is true, I have in mind a philosophical explanation of a necessary truth. When I speak of a “psychological explanation” of a belief revision, I have in mind an empirical explanation of a contingent truth. Finally, I also use the term ‘explanation’ to refer both to the explanatory accounts that are given by theorists, and to a fact which those theorists could correctly cite as the explanans of whatever they are trying to explain. This ambiguity should cause no confusion in context. 14 It is hard to imagine what this belief could be like, especially if we suppose that Sarah does not have any experience that represents the flowers in any way. But perhaps “blind-sight” cases would be an example. It is certainly not at all clear that it is rational to form beliefs on the basis of “blind- sight” in the same way as it is rational to form ordinary perceptual beliefs. 15 Some philosophers will resist the idea that the experience is an “intervening mental state”, mediating between the fact that flowers are pink and Sarah’s belief that the flowers are pink. Instead, these philosophers might suggest, the experience and the belief are merely independent effects of a (non-mental) common cause. If this suggestion were correct, however, then we could give a correct explanation of the belief merely by appealing to this non-mental cause, even if no intervening mental state (such as an experience) played any role in explaining why Sarah formed that belief. As I have argued here, this explanation could not be a correct folk-psychological explanation of the belief: it would fail to make the belief intelligible, as something that we can readily imagine someone in the circumstances finding persuasive or compelling. But surely Sarah’s belief can be given a correct folk-psychological explanation of this kind. Some other philosophers might suggest that, even if a correct folk-psychological explanation of the belief will imply that an experience of the relevant kind occurred, nonetheless, the belief is not explained by the experience. For example, some philosophers might suggest that the experience is a mere enabling condition, rather than a full-fledged explanation of the belief in question. This suggestion is hard to understand, but it can probably be ruled out. An “enabling condition”, in a sense that contrasts with a genuine explanans, must just consist in the absence of 15

factors that would prevent the explanans from having its effect. But it is clear that the occurrence of an experience of the relevant type is not an enabling condition of this sort. Other philosophers might suggest that the experience just is the perceptual belief, so that the belief cannot be explained by the occurrence of the experience. This suggestion can also be ruled out, because I am understanding both the explanandum and the explanans here as involving mental state types, not mental state tokens. The mental state type believing that the flowers are pink is undoubtedly distinct from the type having an experience that represents the flowers as pink. One might believe that the flowers are pink without having any experience that represents the flowers as pink; and vice versa. (For example, a blindfolded person might feel some flowers, and irrationally believe for no reason that they are pink. Or someone might have an experience that represents the flowers as pink, but distrust her own experience for some reason and so refuse to believe that the flowers are pink.) 16 A similar argument, for a similar sort of “internalism” about the explanation of action, is criticized by Rowland Stout; see his Things That Happen Because They Should (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 33–36. (Stout calls the argument the “Argument from the Impotence of Unrepresented Facts”.) Stout thinks that the argument depends on the assumption that a set of facts can supply an adequate explanation of a phenomenon only if those facts constitute a “logically sufficient condition” for that phenomenon (p. 35). But my argument does not depend on this assumption. It depends on the point that any attempt to explain the formation of a belief on the basis of an external non-mental fact will count as a correct folk-psychological explanation only if there is also a more detailed correct explanation in which the link between the external fact and the formation of the belief is mediated by intervening facts about the believer’s mental states. 17 The most notable externalist to insist on including these “factive” mental states among the mental states that can determine the rationality of a belief is Williamson; see especially his “Knowledge as evidence”; “Is knowing a state of mind?” Mind 104 (1995), 533–65; and “Conditionalizing on Knowledge”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1998), 89–121. Compare also John McDowell, “Knowledge and the Internal”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995), 877–93. 18 I am not denying that knowledge ever plays a significant role in folk-psychological explanations. Williamson gives a number of examples where it seems clear that knowledge does play such a role (see “The Broadness of the Mental: Some Logical Considerations”, Philosophical Perspectives 12 (1998), 389–410). For example, perhaps one keeps on digging because one knows that this mine contains gold. Believing, even truly believing, that it contains gold would not have been enough; for then one might have inferred this belief from a lemma whose falsity one might easily have discovered while digging, in which case one would have abandoned the belief and stopped digging. In this case, the explanandum — one’s keeping on digging — consists of one’s interacting with one’s environment in a certain way. So it is only to be expected that the explanans will also involve the agent’s relations to her environment. (For this point, see especially Christopher Peacocke, “Externalist Explanation”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 93 (1993), 203–30.) In the cases that I am principally concerned with, however, the explanandum is one’s coming to believe p. Even if one cannot come to believe p unless one has interacted in the right way with a suitable environment, one’s coming to believe p does not itself consist of one’s interacting with the environment in any particular way. So there is no reason to think that proximate folk-psychological explanation of one’s coming to believe p must involve one’s relations to one’s external environment. 19 This clause is important, to get round the objection that this counterfactual test will always lead one to prefer the most disjunctive explanations possible. The truth of a proposition is not “partially constituted” by the truth of a disjunction of which that proposition is a disjunct — whereas knowing p is partially constituted by believing p. (The principle about explanation appealed to in the text is analogous to a principle about causation that is defended by Stephen Yablo. See “Cause and Essence” Synthese 93 (1992), 403–49, esp. 413–23, and “Wide Causation”, Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997), 251–81. Some closely related ideas about explanation are defended in Williamson, “The Broadness of the Mental”, pp. 395–406.) 20 Rowland Stout criticizes a broadly similar argument about the explanation of action, in Things That Happen Because They Should, pp. 23–32. He rejects this argument on the grounds that it 16

relies on the dubious principle that if there are two distinct explanations of the same phenomenon, one of these explanations must be a proper part of the other. But my argument does not rely on that principle; it is entirely compatible with the claim that the same phenomenon may have two distinct explanations neither of which can be slotted into the other. My argument relies on a special relation that holds between an explanation of a belief that appeals to what the believer knows and the corresponding explanation that appeals to what the believer believes — viz., the fact that the thinker’s knowing q is partially constituted by the thinker’s believing q. 21 To apply a parallel argument to the case of perceptual beliefs, we need the assumption that seeing that p is the case is “partially constituted” by having a visual experience as of p’s being the case. This is denied by those who hold a “disjunctive” view of perception. For a classic statement of the disjunctive view, see John McDowell, “Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge”, Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982), pp. 455–79. For criticism of some of the arguments that are used to support this disjunctive view, see Alan Millar, “The Idea of Experience”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96 (1996), 75–90. The main argument against the disjunctive view is the “Argument from Hallucination” — that is, the argument that it is only if there is a common factor in veridical perception and hallucination that we can explain certain subjectively seamless transitions between perception and hallucination, as well as certain striking similarities in the causal powers of the perception and the hallucination. For a powerful restatement of the Argument from Hallucination, see Mark Johnston, “The Obscure Object of Hallucination” (unpublished manuscript). 22 See Cruz and Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edition (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 130–37. Their argument goes roughly as follows. Epistemic norms are “procedural norms” that can be “internalized”. When norms are internalized, this enables “our cognitive system to follow them in an automatic way without our having to think about them”. So, the circumstance-types in response to which these norms tell us to do something must be “directly accessible to our system of cognitive processing”; that is, “our cognitive system must be able to access them without our first having to make a judgment about whether we are in circumstances of that type”. States that are in this way “directly accessible to our cognitive system” are what Cruz and Pollock call “internal states”. The problem with this argument, as I see it, is that not enough is said about what it means for “our cognitive system” to “follow a norm in an automatic way”, or to “access” a circumstance-type. This makes the argument hard to evaluate. 23 Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, p 140. 24 Compare Christopher Peacocke’s claim that a method “selected by spinning a roulette wheel” will hardly make the belief that results from that method count as knowledge; see his Thoughts: An Essay on Content (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 141. 25 To recall a point that I made in note 18 above, the fact that one is disposed to follow this rule at this time does not itself consist of one’s interacting with one’s environment in any particular way. So there is no reason to think that the proximate folk-psychological explanation of this fact must involve one’s relations to the wider environment. 26 Why accept this interpretation of my proposal? We should accept it precisely because it gives the best explanation of certain powerful intuitions — viz., the intuition that exactly the same beliefs are rational in the two worlds w1 and w2 that I mentioned at the beginning, and the intuition that rationality cannot be purely a matter of luck. There is nothing objectionable in my relying on these intuitions in this way. My goal here is not to show that these intuitions are true, but to explain why they are true.