1 Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism Giada Fratantonio Forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook for The Philosophy of Evidence, eds. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio and Clayton Littlejohn, Routledge [This is a draft. Please cite published version where possible] Abstract According to the ‘Evidential Internalists’, one’s evidence supervenes on one’s non-factive mental states. ‘Evidential Externalists’ deny that, and allow for external factors to determine what evidence one has. After clarifying what Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism entail, and what they are silent on, this chapter provides an opinionated overview of the main arguments and motivations behind Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism. It concludes that Evidential Externalism is a more promising view. 1. Introduction 1 Evidential Internalism (henceforth, Internalism) is the thesis that one’s evidence supervenes on one’s non-factive mental states (roughly put, those mental states that do not necessarily entail anything about the external environment). Evidential Externalism (henceforth, Externalism) denies Internalism and allows for external factors to determine what evidence one has. 2 Traditionally, epistemologists have been Internalists. For instance, empiricists of the twentieth century like Ayer and Russell embraced an account of evidence that we can call the “phenomenological conception of evidence”. 3 On this view, evidence is reducible to sense data the subject can be immediately conscious of (Cf. (Russel, 1912), (Ayer, 1936)). However, the view is also widely held amongst contemporary epistemologists (Cf. (Bonjour, 1999), (Wedgwood, 2002)). 4 Audi, for instance, writes: 1 I am grateful to Natalie Ashton, Liz Jackson, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, and Greta Turnbull for comments on an early draft of this paper. 2 This way of framing the distinction is due to (Silins, 2005). 3 This way of labelling the view is due to Williamson, 2000. 4 While defending a version of Internalism, Conee and Feldman don’t explicitly restrict evidence to non-factive mental states (Conee & Feldman, 2004, p. 57). However, they seem to be sympathetic to something similar to Evidential Internalism.