Moderate Knowledge Externalism

Abstract

Abstract It is argued that the general structure of knowledge is along the lines set out by anti-risk virtue epistemology. Since such a proposal makes no essential demand that one’s cognitive success be significantly supported by reflectively accessible rational support, epistemic externalism about knowledge results. Nonetheless, anti-risk virtue epistemology offers an account of knowledge that is entirely built around a conception of cognitive responsibility. This ensures that it is able to accommodate supposedly internalist intuitions about the relationship between knowledge and cognitive responsibility. Moreover, it is argued that this proposal is entirely consistent with the idea that the knowledge possessed by cognitively developed agents characteristically involves a significant level of reflectively accessible rational support. Indeed, it is claimed that not only does the knowledge possessed by cognitively developed agents enjoy such rational support but also, in line with epistemological disjunctivism, such reflectively accessible rational support will often include factive reasons.