Particularism

An internalist about knowledge is someone who believes that when a person S has knowledge, then S has cognitive access to the basis of knowledge and why it is a good basis. This basis will be a reason, or experience or some other piece of knowledge. According to the internalist S's belief b is knowledge iff:

1. the belief p has feature q

2. beliefs with the feature q are usually true

3. S is aware of 1 and 2

However, 3 is also something that must be known, so it too must meet these requirements. That will lead to an infinite regress because to know something S will have to know something else. The problem with this method is that it seeks to begin the search for knowledge using some criteria, but any croteria will always be more doubtful than our most strongly held beliefs.

Therefore one should adopt a particularist method: taking those beliefs that seem to oneself to be good candidates for being knowledge and noting in what circumstances they do and do not seem reasonable. No doubt there will be disagreement, so it is important to understand that these examples are revisable. One can then make inferences based on the examples and check for consistency. Using conclusions and reflections to revise the examples, and come up with some working criteria of knowledge.

It is obvious from the history of philosophy that there has been much more agreement over items of knowledge such as basic empirical beliefs, belief in the past, in other minds, mathematical beliefs, and to a lesser extent ethical beliefs. Criteria for knowledge on the other hand have been much more varied, and rarely seem acceptable without persuasive argument. For this reason we should continue gathering examples of knowledge in the hope that it will lead us to a better understanding of the correct criteria.