Externalist

According to the externalist, a believer need not have any internal access or cognitive grasp of any reasons or facts which make her belief justified.

Externalist conceptions of justification assert that facts external to the believer can serve as the justification for a belief.

For example, an externalist response to the Gettier problem is to say that, in order for a justified true belief to count as knowledge, there must be a link or dependency between the belief and the state of the external world.

In addition to this, externalist accounts of knowledge, such as Nozick's, are often forced to reject closure in cases where it is intuitively valid.

O'Brien 2006, p. 184 Internalism and externalism Foundationalism can take internalist and externalist forms.

Similarly, critics of externalist foundationalism argue that only mental states or properties the believer is aware of could make a belief justified.

Since this result is supposed to clash with our intuitions that the subject is justified in their beliefs in spite of being systematically deceived, some take the new evil demon problem as a reason for rejecting externalist views of justification.

The content externalist often appeal to observations found as early as Hilary Putnam 's seminal essay, "The Meaning of 'Meaning'," (1975).

Though unfamiliar with the internalist/externalist debate himself, many point to René Descartes as an early example of the internalist path to justification.