Unconscious Inference

I received internalism about justification in my mother's milk, so to speak. Most of my earliest philosophical teachers were internalists in this way, and I have usually thought that this is about right when it comes to justification, despite my flirtations with proper-functionalism.

Recently, I have been more latitudinarian in my internalism - favoring what's been termed "mentalism" by Conee and Feldman in Evidentialism. Mentalism is a kind of bare internalism, it holds that what's justified for me to believe supervenes on my mental states. Thus, a brain-in-a-vat can have all the same justified beliefs that I have if he has all of the same mental states I do. That sounds about right to me (pace externalism about content worries). The upside of this form of internalism is this: my grounding for certain beliefs may not be easily accessible to me in the way that classical internalism envisions.

Philosophers often think (or it seems so) of the thinker as an intellectual, and perhaps even a caricature of an intellectual: a person who comes to all of their beliefs through conscious deliberation. But really, if I survey my own mind, and others seem to avow this, most of my beliefs are not formed this way: I have flashes of insight about theoretical matters when I'm working on something else (maybe after awaking from sleep, in the shower, while I'm working on an unrelated topic), I seem to make inductive inferences without going through any sort of explicit process (I see the groceries on the floor and immediately believe that my wife is home), I act in a way that shows that I have some sort of pro-attitude toward some proposition without it ever crossing my mind that I do (especially in skilled activity - like driving - I evade a road hazard without even thinking about it), etc. 

The basing relation with mentalism points the way toward explaining how we have justified belief (or some other doxastic/quasi-doxastic state) in these cases. Various mental processes, those I don't have direct control over dispose me to form the correct attitude from my evidence without the slightest conscious thought about it. These seem to be operating when I'm thinking about other things, when I'm asleep, when I'm driving, and so on. Often the only indication of these processes are when they seem to 'pop' into my conscious mental landscape, but even then, like in the case of driving, I only seem to be aware of them from the way my mind has directed my behavior.

Anyway, this seems interesting and bears more thought.