If justification is Internalist if and only if it requires that all of
the factors needed for a belief to be epistemically justified for a
given person be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to his
cognitive perspective && Coherentists typically hold that
justification is solely a function of some relationship between
beliefs [some sort of contextual support of each other], none of which
are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationalists, with
different varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific
relationship among beliefs appealed to by that version.
Then by logic Coherentism is a subset of the wider set of Internalist
justification factors, namely that coherentist' necessary relationship
amoung beliefs does not fully explain internalist justification
factors which contain these internal factors that have the special
contextual relationships and internal factors that don't have such
relationships. But I am quickly peicing this crap together on a rather
complex aspect, but follow my links and the set of links towards the
bottom [Bonjour] will take you much further than you need to go; they
will take you into the realm of experimental coherence/complexity
systems theory before such theories were even thought in physics [1985
way ahead of its time but not generally known]..
Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of
some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged
beliefs in the way maintained by foundationalists, with different
varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific relationship
among beliefs appealed to by that version.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/
There are two distinct types of coherentism. One refers to the
coherence theory of truth. The other is belief in the coherence theory
of justification — an epistemological theory opposing foundationalism
and offering a solution to the regress argument. In this
epistemological capacity, it is a theory about how belief can be
justified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism
a theory of justification is internalist if and only if it requires
that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemically
justified for a given person be cognitively accessible to that person,
internal to his cognitive perspective...
Some examples suggest that justification is grounded entirely in what
is internal to the mind, in a sense implying that it is accessible to
introspection or reflection by the subject--a view we might call
internalism about justification
Another problem that Goldman poses for internalism is the problem of
concurrent retrieval.(42) The problem purports to affect only those
internalist views that are versions of holistic coherentism. Holistic
coherentism says that a belief is justified only if it coheres with
one's whole corpus of beliefs, including stored beliefs. This leads to
a problem for the coherentist who also accepts the deontologically
defended claim that one can always find out whether a belief is
justified. Ascertaining whether one belief coheres with the rest by
bringing them all consciously to mind at once is well beyond the
capacities of any person.
This is a problem only when holistic coherentism is conjoined with the
deontologically defended thesis just mentioned. A holistic coherentist
need not accept a deontological conception of epistemic justification,
and can simply deny that epistemic status is something that one always
can find out. The holist can also respond to Goldman's objection by
denying that finding out epistemic status so as to comply with any
relevant duty requires the simultaneous retrieval of all that the
status depends on. It might be held to be sufficient for complying
with a duty to find out whether a belief, B1, coheres with one's other
beliefs simply to form a true belief, B2, that B1 coheres, as long as
B2 itself coheres with the rest of one's beliefs.
In any case, problems peculiar to holistic coherentism cast no doubt
on internalism generally. There are, however, related questions
concerning the accessibility of stored beliefs that might be raised
for other internalist theories, including evidentialism. Here is one
of them. Suppose that someone has a conscious belief that is supported
by some currently conscious evidence. Suppose further that the person
also has a large number of stored beliefs whose conjunction implies
the falsity of the conscious belief. This conjunction is too complex
for the person to entertain. Under these circumstances, what is the
epistemic status of the current belief and can internalism properly
account for that status?
This case does not jeopardize internalism. Consider first internalists
who say that stored beliefs are among the mental items relevant to
justification. Suppose beliefs that are contradicted by some huge
conjunction of stored beliefs are not justified. These internalists
can easily explain this result. They can hold that any conjunction of
the stored beliefs can serve as a defeater of the justification of
current beliefs, regardless of whether the individual can consciously
consider the conjunction. If, on the other hand, beliefs such as those
under consideration here are justified, internalists who hold that
stored beliefs affect justification can also explain this result. They
can say that justification supervenes on a restricted class of stored
mental items. Perhaps items that are too complex to be retrieved are
excluded. In that case, an unbelievably complex conjunction of stored
beliefs would not be a defeater. Perhaps only combinations of stored
beliefs whose negative relevance to the belief in question has been,
or could readily be, noticed or appreciated count as defeaters.
Perhaps, as accessibilists hold, only mental items that are in one way
or another accessible can be defeaters.
http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~feldman/papers/intdef.html
In contemporary epistemology internalism about justification is the
idea that everything necessary to provide justification for a belief
is immediately available in consciousness. Externalism in this context
is the view that there are factors other than those which are internal
to the believer which can affect the justificatory status of a belief.
One strand of externalism is loosely called the causal theory of
knowledge, and reliabilism is sometimes considered to be another
strand. It is important to distinguish internalism about justification
from internalism about knowledge. An internalist about knowledge will
likely hold that the conditions that distinguish mere true belief from
knowledge are similarly internal to the individual's perspective or
grounded in the subject's mental states. Whereas externalism about
justification is a widely endorsed view, there are few defenders of
externalism about knowledge thanks in no small part to Edmund Gettier
and Gettier-examples that suggest that there is more to knowledge than
just justified true belief. In a short but widely discussed paper
published in 1963, Gettier produced examples that seemed to show that
owing to an accidental connection between an individual's evidence or
reasons and the truth of their belief, someone could be justified in
believing something true but nevertheless be ignorant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalism_and_externalism
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mert1230/internal.htm
http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~feldman/papers/intdef.html
Theories of Justification
INTERNALISM: Most broadly, accounts of justification can be divided
into two categories. The internalist accounts make justification a
matter of having reasons, where reasons are information that we
accept, existing, so to speak, in our heads or "internally" to the
knower. Lehrer's embrace of internalism is already clear from his
proviso that justification sufficient for knowledge must be a factor
when we conside whether we know. Two ways of construing what
constitutes reasons leads to a distinction between two main kinds of
internalism.
FOUNDATIONALISM: For the foundationalist, there are "first premises of
justification" (p. 15). The need for first premises found when we
think of justification as having the structure of an argument.
(Foundationalists need not consider justification "in terms of an
argument for a conclusion." See especially John L. Pollock and Joseph
Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (second edition), Chapter 2.)
In order for a premise to be a good reason, the foundationalist
continues, it must itself be supported by a good reason. As this
evidential support cannot continue without end, there must be a
stopping point, a set of "first premises" which are not the
conclusions of any argument. These first premises comprise the
foundation on which all justification is built.
COHERENTISM: The coherentist rejects the notion that justifying
reasons are premises of arguments. Instead, the coherentist proposes
that one has good reasons to think the information that p is correct
if that information "fits in" with all the other things the person
accepts. No information is privileged like the first premises of the
foundationalist. Roderick Chisholm likens coherence to a house of
cards, where each card supports all the others but no card is self-
supporting. As we will see in subsequent chapters, Lehrer is very
sensitive to the foundationalist criticism that this relation of
mutual support is in reality a kind of circularity that undermines
justification.
EXTERNALISM: Externalists reject the view that justification is a
matter of having good reasons (whether in argument form or not) in
favor of the view that it is the result of the right relation between
the subject and the world "outside the head." (Sometimes they reject
the notion of justification altogether, in favor of an analysis of
knowledge which contains a replacement for the justification
condition.) An example of an external theory is a causal theory,
according to which S knows that p when the fact that p (not the
information that represents the fact) causes S to accept the
information that p.
Can't find the link, a commentary on a work by Keith Lehrer, but it is
from here.
http://www.ucdavis.edu/
Since necessity coherentism just makes a claim about the structure
that our justified beliefs must take, it is neutral on whether
coherence must be introspectively accessible if it is to function as a
justifier. In other words, it is neutral on the debate between
epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism. So while the most
important recent coherentists – namely Laurence BonJour (1985) and
Keith Lehrer (1974 and 1990) – have also espoused epistemological
internalism, this commitment is over and above that of structural
coherentism. This makes their views incompatible with strong
coherentism, since the internalist commitment is an additional
condition over and above that of structural coherentism.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/coherent.htm
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter1.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter2.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter3.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter4.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter5.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter6.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter7.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Bonjour'sTheStructureofEmpiricalKnowledgeChapter8.ht...
http://www.fiu.edu/~hauptli/PHI3300.html#Lecture%%20Supplements
> thanks for the help.
>
