Internalist approaches to epistemology, I believe, have a great deal of intuitive appeal. Internalists believe that the features in virtue of which a belief is justified must somehow be internal to the agent. On some views, this amounts to the claim that these features must be accessible to introspection and armchair reflection. On others, it amounts only to the claim that they must be mental features.
Hilary KornblithThe fact that these scientific theories have a fine track record of successful prediction and explanation speaks for itself. (Which is not to say that I don't directly discuss the work of those philosophers who would disagree.) But even if we grant this, many will argue that scientific knowledge in humans, and, indeed, reflective knowledge in general, is quite different in kind from the knowledge we see in other animals.
Hilary KornblithWhen reflection is thereby demystified, I believe that the temptation to view human knowledge as different in kind from animal knowledge is undermined.
Hilary KornblithIn my view, philosophers have shown a great deal more respect for the first-person point of view than it deserves. There's a lot of empirical work on the various psychological mechanisms by way of which the first-person point of view is produced, and, when we understand this, I believe, we can stop romanticising and mythologising the first-person perspective.
Hilary KornblithWhat I hankered for was an account of knowledge which would do far more than get our intuitions about cases right; I wanted a kind of account which would somehow be explanatory.
Hilary KornblithThe various processes of belief acquisition which are native to a species include ones which may allow for the reliable pick-up of information, which, in turn, allows individual members of the species to successfully negotiate their environment and satisfy their various desires.
Hilary KornblithI am concerned about epistemic normativity, and I don't think that it is just a hangover from a priori and armchair approaches. Some ways of forming beliefs are better than others, and epistemologists of all stripes, I believe, have a legitimate interest in addressing the issue of what makes some of these ways better than others.
Hilary Kornblith