Externalism Without Deference

Abstract

The received view is that the externalist tradition from Kripke, Putnam, and Burge at its core appeals to deference. For Putnam and Burge, it's deference to experts. For Kripke, it’s deference to your linguistic community. We show that externalists should reject these appeals to deference: they are remnants of internalism and fail for broadly the same kinds of reasons that traditional descriptivism fails. This is one part of a broader project of developing what we call Pure Externalism, according to which the externalist tradition has not been sufficiently externalist and its core tenets misidentified.