I explore the epistemic justification of self-beliefs regarding personality traits within the internalism-externalism debate. Historically, the question of epistemic justification of self-beliefs has been discussed only with respect to our beliefs about our current mental states while the epistemic justification of our self-beliefs about our personality traits was assumed not to be any different from the justification of our beliefs about the external world. However, I use empirical psychology to highlight a few unique characteristics of our self-beliefs about personality traits that make the typical application of internalist or externalist standards less straightforward. These characteristics have to do with the biases and the self-verification that accompany our self-beliefs about our personality traits. I argue that externalism, in general, and virtue reliabilism, in particular, are more suitable to the context of our self-beliefs about our personality traits than other theories of justification. However, I contend that within the virtue reliabilism framework, a self-belief-forming process can become more competent if it generates self-belief from the instances where individuals manifest the trait in question while having the motivation and opportunity to do otherwise. I show how this condition makes the self-belief-forming process more competent and, therefore, makes the produced self-beliefs more epistemically justified. / Thesis / Master of Philosophy (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/28774 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Mahhouk, Shahdah |
| Contributors | Stotts, Megan, Philosophy |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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