Chapters 3 and 4 are sort of slow-going. The good stuff really comes in at chapter 5. I’m going to quickly lay out brief summaries of chapters 3 and 4. But I’ll warn you now – this will be quick and I won’t have anything substantive to say in this post in the way of criticism.

Chapter 3
I think chapter 3 seemed so slow-going to me because we left with promissory notes to deal with the most interesting arguments.

Bergmann briefly considers Conee and Feldman style mentalism as a way to resist his dilemma for internalism. Mentalism is not committed to an awareness requirement. So if mentalism is a kind of internalism, then we can resist Bergmann’s claim that mentalism has an awareness requirement. Bergmann argues that this is not internalism (a debate that I’m always unclear why we epistemologists ever get into).

In the section where Bergmann says he will argue against Conee and Feldman style mentalism (i.e., the most interesting and exciting part) – we really only get a sketch of how the argument is going to proceed with a promisory note that he will lay out the details in chapter 5. The gist of the argument is this.

Proper functionalism can account for all of the intuitions concerning cases that internalists/mentalists typically think only internalism/mentalism can capture (e.g., The New Evil Demon and Conee and Feldman’s 6 cases from “Internalism Defended”). Proper functionalism also captures intuitive judgments about cases that internalism/mentalism cannot capture. So, we ought to believe proper functionalism over internalism/mentalism.

If Bergmann could show what he claims above – that would be a huge victory for externalism. Alas, we must wait until chapter 5.

Bergmann then considers what he calls a Pollock/Cruz style mentalism. It’s not clear to me why this section was included (Several of my students noted this as well in their weeklies). I think this section could have been shorter.

Here’s the bottomline: Pollock/Cruz talk about procedural justification – it’s not clear that this is even a theory of propositional or doxastic justification (i.e., the sort of justification that Bergmann says that book is about) and if we try and set it up so that it is clearly a theory about propositional or doxastic justification Pollock/Cruz mentalism starts to look suspiciously like a kind of externalist theory.

In fairness to Bergmann, I suppose this section may have been worth including because Conee and Feldman have in places claimed that Pollock and Cruz seem to talk about justification as though it were an internalist/mentalism.

The real bottomline: Most of the action in this chapter has been put off to chapter 5.

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 surveys a host of arguments from deontologism about epistemic justification to internalism. I won’t go into to summarizing all of those. Bergmann argues that even if we assume some kind of deontologism is true, the arguments would not lead to internalism.

I, like Bergmann, have my doubts about whether or not deontologism is true. And have little of substance to say about his criticisms of the arguments (once we take deontologism for granted). I have one nit-picky criticism of his treatment of one of the arguments that I may develop in another post. For now I’ll set that aside.

Chapter 5
I just finished re-reading chapter 5. There’s loads of good stuff to talk about in this chapter. Bergmann lays out his version of proper functionalism. Explains how it’s different from Plantinga’s, and finally explains why he thinks it captures a range of intuitions that internalists have traditionally thought only internalism could capture. Discussion of this chapter may have to take up a few posts. All of that is coming soon.