Is Externalism Content Inconsistent with Internalism About Justification

Abstract

Since Kripke, Putnam and Burge raised the subject in the 1970s, there has been a vigorous debate about the degree to which the content of contentful mental states is fixed by the social or physical environment of the subject. The debate obviously ramifies in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language: more recently, philosophers have begun to explore the consequences of the thesis of wide content (or content externalism) for epistemology.