Abstract

Debates between internalists and externalists hinge not only on different construals of justification and warrant, but also on different construals of the nature of the skeptical challenge, different intuitions regarding what constitutes an adequate answer to the skeptic, and, most fundamentally, the purpose for which theories of knowledge are articulated. In this paper, I defend externalist accounts of justification, arguing both that appropriately nuanced versions of externalism avoid the most pressing objections raised by internalists and that internalism is either conceptually flawed or fares no better than externalism.