'Justification without Awareness' is a defense of "externalism about epistemic justification." This defense has two parts, each taking up about half of the book. The first part is a critique of internalist accounts of justification. The critique is a dilemma. According to Bergmann, internalist accounts of justification lead to either radical skepticism or are unmotivated. Since neither is acceptable, Bergmann rejects internalist accounts of justification. In their place, he offers an "externalist" account of justification in the second part. Bergmann's account is a proper-functionalist account, where an agent's belief is justified if the agent is properly functioning, according to a truth-conducive design plan with a high probability of producing true beliefs, and takes there to be no defeaters for that belief. Bergmann then spends a chapter distinguishing between different types of defeaters. The last two chapters of Bergmann's book are defenses of externalism against two objections: that externalism must approve of epistemic circularity and handles the skeptical challenge inadequately.



To be honest, I really enjoyed this book and thought, in a certain way, it was needed. I'm drawn to Plantinga's account of warrant, but always felt he was missing a "no-defeater" condition. Bergmann's book is a solid attempt to provide that condition; in my mind, it fills a `gap' in the proper-functionalist camp. His account itself is interesting and subtle. Because the book is an extended defense of this account, it has the additional strength of being highly focused. Both parts of the book come together to make a strong defense of Bergmann's view. Different chapters build upon each other, providing a nice holistic treatment of justification. Bergmann also does a great job setting up, and defending his dilemma. In the end, I'm not sure if Bergmann's right on either his critique of internalism or his externalist account; regardless it remains an excellent and rich book, full of sharp distinction and lucid discussion.

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