Speaker Series: Miriam Schoenfield (University of Texas)

Miriam Schoenfield will present “Internalism without Luminosity”.

Abstract:
In this paper I defend a modest internalist claim: there are some purposes for which it is sensible to be interested in a set of exclusively internalist epistemic norms.  I understand an internalist epistemic norm as a norm whose antecedent conditions supervene on traits that I would share with an intrinsic duplicate.  All internalists, modest ones included, face the following challenge: what is it about the kind of traits that an intrinsic duplicate and I share that could explain why only those traits can play whatever role the internalist thinks her norms are playing?  Internalists have frequently appealed to a special kind of epistemic access that we have to these conditions: we can’t be wrong about whether they obtain, we’re always in a position to know whether they obtain, and so forth.  But these claims have been challenged on both empirical and philosophical grounds.  I want to show that internalists needn’t appeal to any kind of privileged access claims.  Rather, what’s special about the states that my intrinsic duplicate and I share is the causal role that they play in planning and action guidance.