Nnadiebube Journal of Philosophy

This study seeks to harmonize the impasse between the internalist and externalist epistemological theories within the purview of integrative epistemology. These two warring factions in contemporary epistemology conduct their debate as if their so called differences cannot be unified. Epistemologists of diverse schools of thought have discussed internalism and externalism from the purview of the Gettier problem, reliabilism, naturalized epistemology, and the issue of justification in general. Some scholars argued that internalism and externalism are contemporary issues in epistemology without reference to the ancient, medieval, and modern epochs of philosophical inquiry. This work strongly holds a contrary view, because every epistemic theory that emerges as a new insight has something that ties it together with the already existing ones. Basically, no epistemic theory holds sway without reference to the already existing theories either as a critique, a criticism, an appraisal, an evaluation, or a review. The objective of this study is to show that internalism and externalism are contemporary advancement of rationalism and empiricism, respectively synergizing their positions, showing that what some scholars construed to be radically different can be integrated. It is with this mindset of epistemic harmonization and integration that ratio-internalist-et-empirico-externalist-spiritodiscourse is made possible. Historical analysis, contextual and textual research methods were employed in this research.

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