Radical epistemology, structural explanations, and epistemic weaponry

(forthcoming, Philosophical Studies) When is a belief justified? There are three families of arguments we typically use to support different accounts of justification: (i) arguments from our intuitive responses to vignettes that involve the concept; (ii) arguments from the theoretical role we would like the concept to play in epistemology; and (iii) arguments from the practical, moral, and political uses to which we wish to put the concept. I focus particularly on the third sort (iii), and specifically on arguments of this sort offered by Clayton Littlejohn (2012) and Amia Srinivasan (2018) in favour of externalism. I counter Srinivasan's argument in two ways: (a) first, I show that the internalist's concept of justification might figure just as easily in the sorts of structural explanation Srinivasan thinks our political goals require us to give; and (b) I argue that the internalist's concept is needed for a particular political task, namely, to help us build more effective defences against what I call epistemic weapons. I conclude that we should adopt an Alstonian pluralism about the concept of justification