A Proposal for a Way out of the Deadlock of Internalism-Externalism Dispute

The internalism-externalism dispute has in fact led contemporary epistemology to a deadlock. Attempts have been made to find a way out of this two of which are very important. One is William Alston's attempt by reconciling the foundation component and the truth-aptness component, and the other is made by two well-known epistemologists, Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski, in terms of virtue epistemology. Alston has, however, proposed a revolutionary idea according to which all epistemic criteria, whether internalist or externalist, are of use in certain contexts. A consideration of such attempts shows that one might hope for a way out of this deadlock. The importance of such attempts is that they exhibit a deeper insight concerning knowledge, since they take knowledge to be partly constructed by the mind and partly produced by the correspondence of mind with the world.