Abstract

This chapter introduces normative externalism about epistemology. It takes what is central to normative externalism to be the denial of level-crossing principles. A level-crossing principle says there is a necessary connection between the propriety of a belief (in some sense of propriety), and the propriety of believing that very belief to be proper. The main theme of this part is outlined: level-crossing principles are inconsistent with evidentialism, and it is level-crossing principles, not evidentialism, that should be abandoned. The chapter also discusses the relationship between state-level evaluations, like the rationality of a belief, and agent-level evaluations, like the wisdom of a believer. And it briefly discusses the role of evidence in mathematics, and how the kind of evidentialism I favor extends to mathematical belief.