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Much of the literature on parties centres on decline and failure, but recently the decline hypothesis has come under attack on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and this has exposed major shortcomings in dominant views (models) of party development, which mostly have offered an externalist view of party development and cast political parties as passive takers of their environment. This view of parties is markedly at odds with the considerable leeway attributed to other political actors and organizations, and whatever the solution to this impasse maybe, it clearly requires looking at party development not only from ‘without’, but also from ‘within’, in ways that capture the two‐ways link between intra‐party politics and resources and inter‐party competition; this perspective brings back not only intra‐party politics as a crucial political arena but also parties as central political actors. Explores this possibility by applying the emerging ‘new’ organizational approach to the trajectory of the French Socialist Party (SFIO, the Section Française de l’lnternationale Ouvrière, until 1971, PS afterwards), which, in the 1970s, staged a spectacular renaissance, and within a decade brought it from near extinction to power—although since then, policy and moral failures have dissipated much of this popular enthusiasm. However, the left's victory at the 1997 elections, the popularity of the current Socialist‐led government, and the weak challenge posed by new politics formations, suggest that much of the capital the PS accumulated in the previous decade remains in place. Provides an internalist account of the PSs jagged trajectory in four parts: the first summarizes externalist approaches to party development; the second analyses the trajectory of the PS over the last three decades in terms of the match and mismatch between party organization and the environment; the third looks at regional variations within this national pattern; and the fourth discusses the resilience of factionalism and draws the implications of this case for the study of political parties.

Chapter 6 concludes that the natural signs of God provide prima facie evidence of God's existence and even, for people in some epistemic positions, makes belief in God reasonable. While the signs are not conclusive for all people and fall short of the kind of belief needed for a robust theism, they can still serve to discomfort the dogmatic naturalist and bolster the uncertain believer. Toward this conclusion, the chapter argues for the reasonableness of the Pascalian constraints present in the Wide Accessibility and Easy Resistibility principles, as contrasted with the rival perspective implicit in the work of John Schellenberg. It also rebuts a Kantian objection to the natural signs, and argues that any epistemological stance (whether internalist or externalist) sufficient to avoid general skepticism is also sufficient to make a strong case that the natural signs for God do provide genuine evidence for God's reality.

This chapter analyzes the concept of an event and of event representation as an umbrella notion. It provides an overview of different ways events have been dealt with in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. This variety of positions has been construed in part as the result of different descriptive and explanatory projects. It is argued that various types of notions — common-sense, theoretically revised, scientific, and internalist psychological — be kept apart.

This chapter provides two definitions of “evidence”. The first is in terms of reliable indicatorship, and the second is in terms of strengthening justification. The discussion also notes the responses of R. Feldman and E. Conee to these definitions. The challenges posed to the viability of (pure) internalist evidentialism are included.

This chapter discusses two possible solutions to the value-of-knowledge problem. It first discusses the conditional probability solution, which was formulated and defended by Erik Olsson. It then considers the “value autonomization”, which has been developed and defended by the author of this book. The chapter then stresses that the swamping problem is equally problematic for many theories of knowledge and internalist theories. The chapter also introduces the concepts of type instrumentalism and token instrumentalism.

In his influential article “Content Preservation”, Tyler Burge argues for the highly unorthodox thesis that, at least under some circumstances, when someone who is a priori entitled to believe that p tells us that p, she thereby renders us a priori entitled to believe that p. Anna-Sara Malmgren has argued against this thesis, and raised objection to what she takes to be Burge's argument for it. After first laying out precisely what Burge's thesis, and his argument, amount to, this chapter shows that Malmgren's argument against Burge rests on a misinterpretation. But the chapter then goes on to argue that, even when correctly interpreted, Burge's argument still does not work: it rests on the premises that (a) what you're entitled to believe is closed under modus ponens consequence, and (b) having an a priori entitlement to believe that you're entitled to believe that p suffices for having an a priori entitlement to believe that p. (a) and (b) appear plausible only if we confuse the externalist kind of warrant that Burge calls “entitlement” with the internalist warrant that he calls “justification”.

This chapter introduces the reader to the problem of sensory misrepresentation in Descartes scholarship and outlines the argumentative strategies for solving it that will be fully developed in the ensuing chapters. It identifies different solutions of the problem stemming from both non‐representationalist and representationalist readings of Cartesians sensations such as causal, teleofunctional and purely internalist accounts. After briefly outlining the reasons for rejecting any of the solutions stemming from the above accounts, this chapter advertises the descriptivist‐causal account of Cartesian sensations that is defended in the book and its solution of the problem of sensory misrepresentation.

This chapter defends a qualified internalist account of the representationality of Cartesian sensations that differs from both externalist readings and from purely internalist accounts (also discussed in this chapter). Although the chapter argues that sensations represent what they do in virtue of some internal feature, it also argues that a causal relation to bodily states plays a role in the formation of sensory ideas. This account is called “descriptivist‐causal” and it has the advantage, over purely internalist accounts, of acknowledging the texts where Descartes claims that ideas of sense are caused by bodies and of explaining what distinguishes sensory representation from purely intellectual representation. It also provides a straightforward answer to the question of how to explain Descartes' claim that sensory ideas are misrepresentations of their objects within his descriptivist theory of ideas. Sensory ideas mis‐present their objects because they contain confused descriptions of the right object of thought.

This chapter describes the nature of deliberation, and defines the debate between internalists and externalists about reasons. Internalists hold that all reasons derive from existing motivations. Externalists believe that objective values provide reasons for acting. Internalism will be defended on the grounds that it is simpler, more intelligible, and more unified in its accounts of both theoretical and practical reasons. Topics to be addressed in later chapters are outlined here.

The internalist construal of nativism appears to explain how nativism may be related to rationalism in epistemology, since nativism may be able to explain the link between an a priori belief and what such a belief may justify. According to Plato, a priori beliefs are justified by a benevolent God, since such beliefs are pre-set in our minds. Also, this interpretation, in a way, clarifies ideas regarding certain nonepistemological aspects of the debate regarding empiricist-rationalist ideals. As nativism is believed to entail the denial of empiricist psychology or at least part of it, there are two aspects of empiricism that nativists may consider. However, while empiricists look into the generality of our mechanisms for innate learning, nativists would assert the poverty of the stimulus notion that the mind should have, aside from those allowed by empiricism, certain task-specific mechanisms. This chapter examines one of nativism's major features: the hypothesis of special faculties.

This chapter begins by reviewing the main hypotheses about the factors responsible for setting and shifting scenes of inquiry. It notes two methodological issues that are vital in the development of a new historiography. The first concerns the proper level required for the analysis of scenes of inquiry in the sciences. The second problem is that of the roles to be assigned to individual agency, choice, and strategic deliberation in shifting and stabilizing scenes of inquiry. The chapter outlines a proposed programme for a new historiography of the sciences centred on the formation, transformation, and dissolution of scenes of inquiry, noting that such a historiography overcomes the opposition between internalist and externalist, intellectualist and praxis-oriented, individualist, and collectivist approaches.

This chapter considers the following thesis and its supporting argument. Philosophical Skepticism: There is no way we could ever attain full philosophical understanding of our knowledge. The Radical Argument: (A1) Any theory of knowledge must be internalist or externalist. (A2) A fully general internalist theory is impossible. (A3) A fully general externalist theory is impossible. (C) Therefore, philosophical skepticism is true. It argues that there is no good reason to yield to the skeptic or to reject externalist theories of knowledge globally and antecedently as theories that could not possibly give us the kind of understanding of human knowledge in general that is a goal of epistemology. And so there is no good reason to accept philosophical skepticism, the main target thesis of this chapter.

A belief being synchronically justified because it is based on adequate grounds may be understood in many senses. These vary from a pure internalist sense in which the grounds of a belief are other beliefs, their adequacy is their rendering that belief probable in some inductive sense, and ‘based on’ is understood as ‘believed to be caused by’ to some pure externalist sense. On a pure externalist theory, ‘based’ is ‘caused’, grounds are any cause, and adequacy is (normally) a matter of the token belief being produced by a process of a reliable type. In almost all of these senses, it is logically probable that a justified belief will be true; and, because truth is valuable, so is justified belief. But only in internalist senses can the believer have access to the fact that his belief is justified; and internalist justification of one kind is valuable for intrinsic reasons and also because it is indicative of truth.

A belief is diachronically justified if it is synchronically justified and results from adequate investigation. Whether the time devoted to an investigation is adequate depends (positively) on how probable it was at the start that investigation would lead to evidence that would greatly change the probability of the belief at stake and how probable it was that the issue was important, and (negatively) on how probable it was that pursuing the investigation would take much time and money. All of these ‘probabilities’ can be spelled out in different internalist and externalist ways, and so there are many different kinds of diachronic justification. Most of these kinds are worth having, because it is logically probable that adequate investigation will lead (without excessive cost) to the believer having his important beliefs more probably true; and justified belief of two of these kinds is also intrinsically valuable. However, the believer can only have access to the justification of an internally justified belief.

Offers an internalist and perspectivalist reading of G. E. Moore's epistemological views. Challenges Barry Stroud's influential interpretation and defends Moore's rejection of scepticism, his ‘defence of common sense’ and his ‘proof of an external world’ against Stroud's criticisms. The conception of knowledge‐yielding enquiry, as addressed to determinate questions, within a setting of defeasible agreements regarding epistemic methods, norms, and background beliefs, is worked out in greater detail.

The central question of Chapter 5 is to which type of rationality natural theology (also called rational theology) should aspire. Many types of rationality are identified, and various notions of epistemic rationality specified. It is argued that the natural theologian should aspire to rationality₅ , that is, to acquiring beliefs the probability of which is determined by applying correctly the right rules of inference on the basis of an evidence-set that is obtained by an objectively adequate investigation. This requirement raises the question as to what are the best methods of research for natural theology, which will be discussed in Chapter 6.

This chapter sheds light on private actors that have the standing or capacity to exercise certain forms of power or make certain decisions in terms of representative agency. It discusses a novel account of the conditions that an agent must meet in order to act or speak in the name of another known as the internalist account of representative agency. It also points out how qua private actors from public institutions systematically fail to act even when private actors act under valid democratic authorization. The chapter elaborates how private actors fail to meet the demands of the representation condition on legitimate exercise. It explains what extent private actors meet the representation condition, confirming if they can truly act in the name of the people whom a government is meant to represent.

Hegel's legal philosophy has been categorised in various ways. Different commentators claim Hegel's theory endorses natural law, legal positivism, the historical school of jurisprudence, a precursor of Marxist legal theory, postmodern critical theory or even transcendental idealist legal theory. In a previous work, the author argued that that Hegel's legal philosophy occupies a space inbetween natural law and legal positivism. He no longer holds this view, and presents a new picture of Hegel's legal theory in this chapter. The chapter defends the position that Hegel is a natural lawyer, although not of a more familiar variety. Natural lawyers argue that there is an external standard or set of standards which we can employ to assess the justice of our positive, or written, laws. Hegel's natural law differs from these accounts insofar as he instead uses an internal standard of justice that is immanent to law. The chapter is organised as follows. First, it explains the primary features of the natural law tradition. Second, the chapter considers how closely Hegel's theory of law resembles this general perspective. Third, it argues that Hegel's theory presents us with an internalist natural law. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of popular institutions in the development of law.