Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeFoundationalist Theories of Epistemic JustificationFirst published Mon Feb 21, 2000; substantive revision Wed Mar 23, 2005Foundationalism is a view about the structure of justification orknowledge. The foundationalist's thesis in short is that all knowledgeand justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferentialknowledge or justified belief. A little reflection suggests that the vast majority of thepropositions we know or justifiably believe have that status onlybecause we know or justifiably believe other different propositions.So, for example, I know or justifiably believe that Caesar was anassassinated Roman leader, but only because I know or justifiablybelieve (among other things) that various historical texts describe theevent. Arguably, my knowledge (justified belief) about Caesar's deathalso depends on my knowing (justifiably believing) that the texts inquestion are reliable guides to the past. Foundationalists want tocontrast my inferential knowledge (justified belief) about Caesar witha kind of knowledge (justified belief) that doesn't involve the havingof other knowledge (justified belief). There is no standard terminologyfor what we shall henceforth refer to as noninferential knowledge or justification.[1]For convenience, in what follows we will concentrate onfoundationalism about justification. Everything said about justifiedbelief will apply mutatis mutandis to foundationalist views aboutknowledge. On the “classical” analysis of knowledge, thecore of the concept of knowledge is justified true belief andthe foundational structure of knowledge simply derives from thefoundational structure or justification. It should be noted, however,that the presupposition that the structure of knowledge parallels thestructure of justification is controversial. Indeed, in a highlyinfluential book, Timothy Williamson (2000) argues that knowledge isunananalyzable and is a concept that should be employed inunderstanding a host of other interesting epistemic concepts,including the concept of evidence. In short, his view is that ourevidence simply consists in everything we know. Justification may havefoundations but only because we end a regress of justification withpropositions that are known—the evidential foundational on whichall justified belief rests is knowledge (186). A discussion ofWilliamson's view would take us too far afield, however, and in whatfollows I will continue to suppose that our understanding of knowledgeis parasitic upon our understanding of justification, and not viceversa.It is surely fair to suggest that for literally thousands of years thefoundationalist's thesis was taken to be almost trivially true. Whenan argument was implicitly or explicitly offered for the view it wasmost often the now famous regress argument. It is important, however,to distinguish two quite different regress arguments forfoundationalism—the epistemic regress argument and theconceptual regress argument.1. The Regress Arguments for Foundationalism2. The Analysis of Noninferential Justification2.1 Noninferential Justification as Infallible Belief2.2 Noninferential Justification as Infallible Justification3. Objections to Classical Foundationalism4. Externalist Versions of FoundationalismBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. The Regress Arguments for FoundationalismSuppose I claim to be justified in believing that Fred will dieshortly and offer as my evidence that Fred has an untreatable andserious form of cancer. Concerned, you ask me how I discovered thatFred has the cancer and I respond that it is just a hunch on mypart. As soon as you discover that I have no reason at all to supposethat Fred has the cancer, you will immediately conclude that mywhimsical belief about Fred's condition gives me no justification forbelieving that Fred will soon die. Generalizing, one might suggest thefollowing principle:To be justified in believing P on the basis ofE one must be justified in believing E.Now consider another example. Suppose I claim to be justified inbelieving that Fred will die shortly and offer as my justificationthat a certain line across his palm (his infamous“lifeline”) is short. Rightly skeptical, you wonder thistime what reason I have for believing that palm lines have anythingwhatsoever to do with length of life. As soon as you become satisfiedthat I have no justification for supposing that there is any kind ofprobabilistic connection between the character of this line and Fred'slife you will again reject my claim to have a justified belief aboutFred's impending demise. That suggests that we might expand ourPrinciple of Inferential Justification (PIJ) to include a secondclause:Principle of Inferential Justification: To be justified in believing P on the basis of Eone must not only be (1) justified in believing E, but also(2) justified in believing that E makes probable P.With PIJ one can present a relatively straightforwardepistemic regress argument for foundationalism. If alljustification were inferential then for someone S to bejustified in believing some proposition P, S must bein a position to legitimately infer it from some other propositionE1. But E1 could justifyS in believing P only if S were justifiedin believing E1, and if all justification wereinferential the only way for S to do that would be to inferit from some other proposition justifiably believed,E2, a proposition which in turn would have to beinferred from some other proposition E3 which isjustifiably believed, and so on, ad infinitum. But finitebeings cannot complete an infinitely long chain of reasoning and so ifall justification were inferential no-one would be justified inbelieving anything at all to any extent whatsoever. This most radicalof all skepticisms is absurd (it entails that one couldn't even bejustified in believing it) and so there must be a kind ofjustification which is not inferential, i.e., there must benoninferentially justified beliefs which terminate regresses ofjustification.If we accept the more controversial second clause of PIJ, the loomingregresses proliferate. Not only must S above be justified inbelieving E1, S must also be justified inbelieving that E1 makes likely P, aproposition he would have to infer (if there are no foundations) fromsome other proposition F1, which he would have toinfer from F2, which he would have to infer fromF3, and so on ad infinitum. ButS would also need to be justified in believing thatF1 does in fact make likely thatE1 makes likely P, a proposition he wouldneed to infer from some other proposition G1,which he would need to infer from some other propositionG2, and so on. And he would need to infer thatG1 does indeed make likely thatF1 makes likely that E1 makeslikely P, and so on. Without noninferentially justifiedbeliefs, it would seem that we would need to complete an infinitenumber of infinitely long chains of reasoning in order to be justifiedin believing anything!The above argument relies on the unacceptability of a viciousepistemic regress. But one might also argue, morefundamentally, that without a concept of noninferentialjustification, one faces a vicious conceptual regress. Whatprecisely is our understanding of inferential justification?What makes PIJ true? It is at least tempting to answer that PIJ is ananalytic truth. Part of what it means to claim that someonehas inferential justification for believing some proposition P is thathis justification consists in his ability to infer P from some otherproposition E1 that is justifiably believed. Butif anything like this is a plausible analysis of the concept ofinferential justification, we face a potential vicious conceptualregress. The analysis of inferential justification presupposes anunderstanding of justified belief. We need to introduce a concept ofnoninferential justification in terms of which we can then recursivelydefine inferential justification.Consider an analogy. Suppose a philosopher introduces the notion ofinstrumental goodness (something's being good as a means). Thatphilosopher offers the following crude analysis of what it is forsomething to be instrumentally good. X is instrumentally goodwhen X leads to something Y which is good. Even ifwe were to accept this analysis of instrumental goodness, it is clearthat we haven't yet located the conceptual source of goodness. Ouranalysis of instrumental goodness presupposes an understanding of whatit is for something to be good. In short we can't understand what itis for something to be instrumentally good until we have some prior(and more fundamental) understanding of what it is for something to beintrinsically good. The conceptual regress argument forfoundationalism puts forth the thesis that inferential justificationstands to noninferential justification as instrumental goodness standsto intrinsic goodness.2. The Analysis of Noninferential JustificationIf foundationalists are united in their conviction that there must bea kind of justification that does not depend on the having of otherjustified beliefs, they nevertheless disagree radically amongthemselves as to how to understand noninferential justification. Inthe latter part of this century, the rise of externalistepistemologies has generated even more fundamentally differentversions of foundationalism. It will not be possible to survey all ofthe strikingly different analyses that have been offered ofnoninferential justification. In what follows we will examine a few ofthe more prominent versions of classical and contemporary externalistfoundationalisms.2.1 Noninferential Justification as Infallible BeliefDescartes is often taken to be the paradigm of a classicalfoundationalist. Determined to build knowledge on appropriate andsecure foundations he seemed to want to identify foundationalknowledge with infallible belief. Implicitly or explicitly othersseemed to follow his lead by restricting noninferentially justifiedbeliefs to beliefs that cannot be mistaken. Thus, for example, whenPrice (1950) introduced the notion of sense data, knowledge of whichwould be included in his foundations of empirical knowledge, hecontrasted sense data and their nonrelational properties with othersorts of things about which one could be mistaken, implying again thatthe way to find the correct foundations of knowledge is to eliminatefrom one's beliefs system all those beliefs that could befalse. Following Lehrer (1974, p. 81)) we might formulate thefollowing definition of infallible belief:S's belief that P at t isinfallible if S's believing P at t entails[2] that P is true.As Lehrer and others have pointed, it is far from clear that thisconcept of infallible belief has much relevance to an attempt tounderstand the epistemic concept of noninferential justification. Thefirst and most striking problem involves necessary truths. Everynecessary truth is entailed by every proposition, and thus if I happento believe a necessary truth, P, that I believe Pwill entail that P is true. Thus by the above definition mybelief that P will be infallible whenever P is anecessary truth even if P is far too complicated for me toprove and I believe it solely on a whim.Furthermore, a foundation of knowledge and justified belief restrictedto infallible beliefs (as defined above) would arguably be far tooflimsy to support any sort of substantial epistemic edifice. Thereare a few contingent propositions that are trivially entailed by thefact that they are believed. My belief that I exist entails that Iexist, that I have at least one belief, that someone has beliefs, thatexperience (broadly construed) exists, etc. But once we get past thesesorts of “self-referential” propositions, propositionswhose very subject matter encompasses the fact that they are believed,it is hard to come up with uncontroversial examples of infalliblebeliefs. Ayer (1956, p. 19) argues that as long as the belief thatP is one state of affairs and P's being the case isan entirely different state of affairs (not including as a constituentthe former) there can be no logical absurdity in the supposition thatthe former could occur without the latter.Although it doesn't add much to the logical force of the argument, onemight employ our hunches about how the brain might work torhetorically bolster the argument. Consider a standard candidate foran infallible empirical belief, my belief that I am in pain now. It issurely possible that the region of the brain causally responsible forproducing the belief that I am in pain is entirely different from theregion of the brain causally responsible for producing the pain. Theremay be a causal connection between the occurrence of the“pain” brain event and the occurrence of the“belief” brain event, or vice versa, but even if thecausal connection holds it will be a contingent fact that it does. Ithardly seems that the neurophysiologist could discover these (or anyother) causal connections purely a priori. But if the brain stateresponsible for my belief that I am in pain is wholly different fromthe brain state responsible for the pain, and if the connectionsbetween them are merely nomological, then it is in principle possibleto produce the one without the other. The belief will not entail thetruth of what is believed.2.2 Noninferential Justification as Infallible JustificationIt may be that classical foundationalists start off on the wrong footif they seek foundations in logical relations between the mere factthat someone believes some proposition and the proposition's beingtrue. Noninferential justification is, after all, a kind ofjustification and if the impossibility of error is essential tononinferential justification, it may be more plausible to locate thesource of infallibility in a special kind of justification availablein support of a belief. Let us say that S's belief isinfallibly justified at t when S's justification forbelieving P at t relevantly entails the truth ofP. We need to qualify the entailment as relevant tocircumvent the problems discussed earlier. Whenever I have anyjustification at all for believing a proposition that turns out to benecessarily true, that justification will entail the necessarytruth. But we do not want just any sort of justification to yieldinfallibly justified belief even if the object of that belief is anecessary truth.What is the difference between relevant and irrelevant entailment?This is a question notoriously difficult to answer, but intuitively itshould have something to do with the fact that would make true theproposition entailed and the fact that would make true the propositionthat entails it. More specifically, we could say that Prelevantly entails Q only if the fact that would makeP true is at least a constituent of the fact that would makeQ true. This suggestion can be considered at best onlypreliminary since we will obviously need a more detailed account offacts and their constituents. That I have grey hair entails thatsomeone has grey hair, but is my having grey hair a constituent of thefact that is someone's having grey hair? There is certainly a sensein which it is something one can point to in answer to the question“What makes it true that someone has grey hair?” Onecannot appropriately point to my having grey hair as something thatmakes it true that two plus two equals four.Consider again my belief that I'm in pain (when I am). If such abelief is noninferentially justified, in what does the justificationfor that belief consist. Surely not in the mere fact that theproposition is believed. What is it that distinguishes this belief frommy belief about Caesar's assassination. Some foundationalists want tolocate the noninferential justification in the truth-maker for theproposition believed. What justifies me in believing that I'm in painwhen I am is the mere fact that I'm in pain. But again, what is itabout my being in pain as opposed to Caesar's being assassinated whichmakes it appropriate to claim that my being in pain justifies me inbelieving that I'm in pain while Caesar's having been assassinateddoesn't justify me in believing that Caesar was assassinated.It is tempting to think that the foundationalist is better offappealing to some special relation that I have to my painwhich makes it unnecessary to look to other beliefs in order tojustify my belief that I'm in pain. It is the fact that I have a kindof access to my pain that no-one else has that makes mybelief noninferentially justified while others must rely on inferencein order to discover that I am in this state. This takes us to anotherclassical version of foundationalism, the acquaintance theory. Perhapsthe best known proponent of an acquaintance theory is Bertrand Russell,[3] but it takes little imagination to read the view into most of theBritish empiricists. Roughly the view is that what justifies S inbelieving that he is in pain when he does is the fact that S isdirectly and immediately acquainted with his pain in a way in which heis not directly and immediately acquainted with any contingent factsabout Caesar, the physical world, the future, and so on. On acorrespondence conception of truth, one might add that to be fullyjustified in believing a proposition to be true one must be acquaintednot only with the fact that makes the proposition true but therelation of correspondence that holds between the proposition and thefact.In one of the most influential arguments against foundationalism,Wilfrid Sellars (1963, 131-32) argued that the idea of the given intraditional epistemology contains irreconcilable tensions. On the onehand, to ensure that something's being given does not involve anyother beliefs, proponents of the view want the given to be untaintedby the application of concepts. On the other hand, the wholedoctrine of the given is designed to end the regress of justification,to give us secure foundations for the rest of what we justifiablyinfer from the given. But to make sense of making inferences from thegiven the given must have a truth value. The kind of thing that has atruth value involves the application of concepts or thought, acapacity not possessed (we may presume) by at least lower-orderanimals.If there is a solution to the dilemma presented by Sellars (andothers) it is to emphasize that acquaintance is not by itself anepistemic relation. Acquaintance is a relation that other animalsmight bear to properties and even facts, but it also probably does notgive these animals any kind of justification for believinganything, precisely because these other animals probably do not havebeliefs. Without thought or propositions entertained there is notruth, and without a bearer of truth value in the picture there isnothing to be justified or unjustified. The acquaintance theorist canargue that one has a noninferentially justified belief that Ponly when one has the thought that P and one is acquaintedwith both the fact that P, the thought that P, andthe relation of correspondence holding between the thought thatP and the fact that P. On such a view no single actof acquaintance yields knowledge or justified belief, but when one hasthe relevant thought (entertains the relevant proposition), the threeacts together constitute noninferential justification. When everythingthat is constitutive of a thought or a proposition's being true isimmediately before consciousness, there is nothing more that one couldwant or need to justify a belief. The state that constitutesnoninferential justification is a state that contains as constituentsboth the bearer of truth-value and the truth-maker.[4]When an acquaintance with the fact that P is part of whatconstitutes my noninferential justification for believing P,there is a trivial sense in which my noninferential justification isinfallible. I can't be directly acquainted with the fact thatP while I believe P falsely. There is, however,nothing to prevent an acquaintance theorist from allowing that one canbe noninferentially justified in believing P by virtue ofbeing directly acquainted with a fact very similar to, but ultimatelydifferent from the fact that P (the fact that makesP true). Such an acquaintance theory could allow for thepossibility of noninferentially justified but false belief that P.[5]3. Objections to Classical FoundationalismOnce the received view, classical foundationalism has come underconsiderable attack in the last few decades. We have alreadyconsidered the very influential objection raised by Sellars to theidea of there being a “given” element in experience. It iscrucial that the foundationalist discover a kind of truththat can be known without inference. But there can be no bearers oftruth value without judgment and judgment involves the application ofconcepts. But to apply a concept is to make a judgment about classmembership, and to make a judgment about class membership alwaysinvolves relating the thing about which the judgment is made to otherparadigm members of the class. These judgments of relevant similaritywill minimally involve beliefs about the past, and thus be inferentialin character (assuming that we can have no “direct” accessto facts about the past). A reply to this objection would take us farafield indeed. Perhaps it will suffice to observe that the objectionrelies on a number of highly controversial claims about the nature ofjudgment, most of which the classical foundationalist should and wouldreject.The direct acquaintance theorist does presuppose the intelligibilityof a world that has “structure” independent of anystructure imposed by the mind. Without nonlinguistic facts that areindependent of the thoughts and judgments that represent them, onecould not make sense of a relation of acquaintance between a personand a fact, a relation that grounds noninferential justification. Moreradical contemporary rejections of foundationalism may well involvedissastification with the foundationalist's implicit commitment to astrong realistic correspondence conception of truth. Since Kant therehas always been a strong undercurrent of anti-realism running throughphilosophy. The metaphor is that of the mind imposing structure onreality. And there is an intuitively plausible sense in which one cangenuinely wonder whether it makes sense to ask about the number ofcolors that are exemplified in the world independently of someframework provided by color concepts. But despite theperiodic popularity of extreme anti-realism, it is surely absurd tosuppose that it is even in principle possible for a mind to force astructure on a literally unstructured world. There are indefinitelymany ways to sort the books in a library and some are just as usefulas others, but there would be no way to begin sorting books were booksundifferentiated. If a rejection of foundationalism relies on anextreme form of anti-realism so much the worse for theanti-foundationalist.Just as some anti-foundationalists reject the conception of truthunderlying classical foundationalist accounts of noninferentialjustification, so others profess to be bewildered by some of thefundamental concepts employed in defining noninferentialjustification. The acquaintance theorist tends to have relativelylittle to say by way of analyzing what direct acquaintance is. To besure one can try to give someone a feel for what one is talking aboutby contrasting one's awareness of pain with the temporary distractioncaused by an engrossing conversation. It is tempting to suppose thatfor a short time the pain was still present but the person with thepain was no longer aware of the fact that the pain exists. Thisawareness, the acquaintance theorist will argue, is obviouslysomething over and above mere belief in the existence of the pain, asone can believe that one is in a mental state (say a subconsciousmental state) without being aware of that state. Like most theoriesfoundationalism will, however, ultimately rest its intelligibility onan appeal to a sui generis concept that defies further analysis. Justas one needs to end epistemic regresses with foundationaljustification, the foundationalist will argue, so one needs to endconceptual regresses with concepts one grasps without furtherdefinition.Laurence BonJour (1985) raised another highly influential objection toall forms of classical foundationalism (an objection raised before hejoined the ranks of foundationalists). The objection presupposed astrong form of what we might call access internalism. Put verysuperficially the access internalist argues that a feature of a beliefor epistemic situation that makes a belief noninferentially justifiedmust be a feature to which we have actual or potential access.Moreover, we must have access to the fact that the feature in questionis probabilistically related to the truth of what we believe. Sosuppose some foundationalist offers an account of noninferentialjustification according to which a belief is noninferentiallyjustified if it has some characteristic X. BonJour thenargues that the mere fact that the belief has X could not,even in principle, justify the believer in holding the belief. Thebeliever would also need access to (justified belief that!) the beliefin question has X and that beliefs of this sort (Xbeliefs) are likely to be true. At least one of these propositionscould only be known through inference, and thus the putativenoninferential justification is destroyed.BonJour presented the objection on the way to developing a coherencetheory of empirical justification. But it ultimately became obviousthat the objection to foundationalism, if good, was too strong. Giventhe structure of the argument it should become evident that thecoherence theory (and any other theory) would be equally vulnerable tothe argument. Just replace “X” with somecomplicated description of beliefs cohering with each other. Thatmight suggest to the classical foundationalist that strong accessinternalism is a view to be avoided.The Principle of Inferential Justification used to generate theregress argument for foundationalism is itself controversial. It isimportant to note that either clause of the principle can be used byitself to generate the allegedly vicious epistemic and conceptualregress for the philosopher who rejects foundations. It is the twoclauses combined that are supposed to present the anti-foundationalistwith an infinite number of vicious regresses. A number of philosophers(among them foundationalists) would argue that the second clause ofPIJ confuses levels of epistemic questions. It is far too strong torequire someone to have a justified belief in a probabilisticconnection between available evidence and the conclusion reached onthe basis of that evidence. Such a requirement is at best plausiblefor having second-level justification for believing that one has aninferentially justified belief. In responding to a challenge presentedto one's having an inferentially justified belief in P on thebasis of E one might find oneself searching for justificationto support the claim that E makes probable P, butthat is only because in the context of the challenge one is trying tomake good (i.e., justify) the claim that one has a justified belief. Asimilar claim might be made with respect to clause 1) of theprinciple, although it is more difficult to generate the supportingintuition.In any event, the careful foundationalist is certainly notconfused about level-distinctions. The foundationalist whosupports PIJ is claiming that a necessary condition for someone'shaving an inferentially justified belief in P based onE is that the person have both a justified belief inE and a justified belief in the proposition that Emakes P probable. It is simply not enough that E istrue or that E does in fact make probable P. Ouroriginal examples used to support PIJ would seem to reinforce thatconclusion. Even if there happened to be some bizarre connectionbetween palm lines and length of life, for example, the person who hasno reason to believe that such a connection exists has nojustification for conclusions reached about length of life based onthis anatomical feature of people.Huemer (2002) objects to using examples like the palm-line inferenceto argue for the second clause of the principle of inferentialjustification. While most share the intuition that we would needadditional information in order to legitimately infer truths about thelength of a person's life from knowledge of palm lines, all thatreally shows is that we wouldn't view the inference in question aslegitimate in the first place. Even palm readers don't think thatthey can make predictions about a person's life based on informationabout palm lines and that information alone. But that doesn't showthat when we have an argument whose premises really do support itsconclusion we still need to be aware of the connection in order tojustifiably believe the conclusion based on the premises. But whileHuemer's point is plausible and the foundationalist trying to arguefor the second clause of the principle of inferential justificationshould heed Huemer's warning to be careful in the use of examples, itis not clear that one can't find plausible examples of inferences frompremises to conclusion where the premises do make probable, evenentail, the conclusion but the resulting belief is unjustified becausethe person who reached the conclusion had no awareness of the relevantconnection between premise and conclusion. All we need to do isconsider a person who infers P from E whereE logically entails P, but where the entailment isfar too complex for the person to see or even understand. Surely thebelief that P is unjustified if the person who reachesconclusion couldn't “see” how the available evidenceentais the conclusion.There are, of course, other responses to the charge of vicious regressfacing anti-foundationalists. The coherence theorist rejects thefoundationalist's presupposition that justification is linear. Eachbelief is justified by virtue of its coherence with the rest of whatone believes but one avoids the appearance of vicious circularity byinsisting that one needn't first have justification forbelieving the other propositions in one's belief system. The coherencetheorist's response to the argument for foundationalism is, of course,only as plausible as the coherence theory of justification (Seecoherence theories of justification).Peter Klein (1998) may be the lone supporter of a view he callsinfinitism. The infinitist accepts the need to be able tosupply non-circular justification for believing what we do, but arguesthat given the complexity of the human mind and its capacity toentertain and justifiably believe an infinite number of propositions,there is nothing vicious about the relevant regresses we face. Thereis no reason to suppose that we would be unable to justify everyproposition we believe by appeal to some other different propositionwhich we justifiably believe. Infinitism is a view that should beseriously considered, particularly once one realizes that one not onlycan but does have an infinite number of justified beliefs (e.g., that2 is greater than 1, that 3 is greater that 1, and so on.). It is notclear, however, that even if the infinitist can cope with theepistemic regress argument foundationalism, he has a response to theconceptual regress argument discussed earlier. Klein will argue,however, that one needn't define inferential justification recursivelyby relying on a base clause that invokes the concept of noninferentialjustification. Rather one can employ a base clause the invokes anununanalyzed generic understanding of justification.Although anti-foundationalists are not always eager to admit it, Isuspect that the primary dissatisfaction with classicalfoundationalism lies with the difficulty the view has avoiding radicalskepticism. On infallible belief, infallible justification, or directacquaintance theories of foundational justification, there is preciouslittle included in the foundations of knowledge. Most classicalfoundationalists reject the idea that one can have noninferentiallyjustified beliefs about the past, but the present disappears into thepast in the blink of an eye. How can one even hope to get back thevast body of knowledge one pre-philosophically supposes one has, ifone's epistemic base is so impoverished. If the second clause of thePrinciple of Inferential Justification were accepted, the problem iseven more serious. One might be able to convince oneself that one canknow noninferentially the principles of deductive reasoning, butdeduction will not take one usefully beyond the foundations ofknowledge and justified belief. As Mill (1906, p. 126) argued, thereis a very real sense in which one doesn't advance one's knowledgesignificantly employing a form of reasoning that takes one only toconclusions that were implicitly contained in the conjunction of one'spremises. To advance beyond foundations we will inevitably need toemploy non-deductive reasoning and according to PIJ that willultimately require us to have noninferential (direct) knowledge ofpropositions describing probability connections between evidence andconclusions. It is not absurd on the face of it to suppose that onecan have noninferential a priori knowledge of probabilisticconnections, but it is perhaps an understatement to suppose that theview is not popular.[6]4. Externalist Versions of FoundationalismThe epistemic landscape has changed dramatically in the last quarterof a century with the rise of externalist epistemologies. It isnotoriously difficult to define clearly the controversy betweeninternalists and externalists in epistemology.[7] It is sometimes taken to be a controversy over whether or not one canidentify epistemic properties with “internal” states ofbelievers. Others seem to think that the controversy centers over thequestion of whether one requires certain sorts of access (or potentialaccess) to the states or properties that constitute havingjustification. Certainly, paradigm externalists would reject thesecond clause of the principle of inferential justification. Accordingto virtually all externalists, one can arrive at a justified belief inP by inferring it from E without being aware of anysort of evidential connection between E and P.While the externalist defends radically different views than those ofclassical foundationalists, the structure of knowledge andjustification that emerges from such theories is still often afoundationalist structure. We might first illustrate the point byexamining the view defended by the most prominent of the externalists,Alvin Goldman's reliabilism.[8]The fundamental idea behind reliabilism is strikingly simple.Justified beliefs are reliably produced beliefs. Justified beliefs areworth having because justified beliefs are probably true. Goldmaninitially distinguished, however, two importantly different sorts ofjustified beliefs—those that result from belief-independentprocesses and those that result from belief-dependent processes. Theformer are beliefs that are produced by “software” of thebrain that takes as its “input” stimuli other thanbeliefs; the latter are beliefs produced by processes that take astheir input at least some other beliefs. So, for example, it ispossible that we have evolved in such a way that when prompted withcertain sensory input we immediately and unreflectively reachconclusions about external objects. And we may live in a world inwhich beliefs about the external world produced in this way areusually true (or would usually be true if enough of them were generated).[9] Such beliefs will be justified by virtue of being the product ofreliable belief-independent processes. They can in turn be taken asinput for reliable belief-dependent processes in order to generatestill more justified beliefs. A belief-dependent process is reliableif its output beliefs are usually (or would usually) be true if therelevant input beliefs are true, and the output beliefs of reliablebelief-dependent processes are justified provided that the inputbeliefs are justified.[10]The above is but the crudest sketch of Goldman's earlyreliabilism—he later modified it to deal with a number ofobjections. But the sketch is enough to bring out the foundationaliststructure inherent in a reliabilist account. The reliabilist actuallyaccepts the first clause of PIJ, but avoids both the epistemic andconceptual regresses by embracing a kind of justified belief that doesnot owe its justification to the having of other different justifiedbeliefs. That the reliabilist is concerned with avoiding theconceptual regress is clear from the fact that the analysis offered isexplicitly recursive. The base clause of the recursive analysis ineffect captures the concept of a noninferentially justifiedbelief.I have illustrated the way in which an externalist account ofjustified belief can exemplify a foundationalist structure byexamining one of the most prominent versions of externalism,reliabilism. But other versions of externalism are also implicitly orexplicitly committed to a version of foundationalism, or, at the veryleast, give an account of justification that would enable one todistinguish noninferential from inferential justification, direct fromindirect knowledge. Consider, for example, a crude version of theso-called causal theory of knowledge according to which one knows aproposition when one believes it and the belief is caused (in the“right” way) by the very fact that makes true what isbelieved. Obviously, on such an account one can distinguish causalchains leading to the belief in question that involve intermediatebeliefs from those that do not, and using this distinction one canagain define a distinction between direct and indirect knowledge.[11]Externalist versions of foundationalism are probably attractive tomany because they often allow at least the possibility of a muchexpanded foundational base of justified beliefs. The reliabilist'snoninferentially justified beliefs, for example, might be produced byprocesses that are not even very reliable. Unlike the Cartesian, thereliabilist's distinction between noninferentially and inferentiallyjustified belief has nothing to do with how probable it is that thebelief in question is true. If nature has been co-operative enough toinsure the evolution of cognitive agents who respond to theirenvironmental stimuli with mostly true beliefs then there might be anenormous store of foundational knowledge upon which we can draw inarriving at inferentially justified conclusions. On most externalistaccounts of noninferentially justified belief there are literally noa priori constraints on what might end up beingnoninferentially justified.A full evaluation of externalist versions of foundationalism is farbeyond the scope of this article. The very ease with which theexternalist can potentially broaden the foundational base ofnoninferentially justified belief is, ironically, one of the primaryconcerns of those philosophers unhappy with externalist epistemology.Many internalists are convinced that externalists are simplyre-defining epistemic terms in such a way that they lose the kind ofmeaning that the philosopher wants them to have in order to ask thekind of penetrating philosophical questions that are the peculiarproduct of a kind of philosophical curiosity. When a philosopherstarts looking for justification in support of a belief, theinternalist will argue, the philosopher is interested in achieving astate in which a kind of philosophical curiosity is satisfied. Thatphilosopher wants epistemic justification to provide a kind ofassurance of truth. If I'm wondering whether or not I havejustification to believe that God exists, I'm hardly going to thinkthat my question has been answered when I'm told by the reliabilistthat I might have a reliably produced belief that God exists or whenI'm told by the causal theorist that my belief that God exists mightbe caused by the very fact that God exists. As far as satisfyingintellectual curiosity, exemplifying reliably-produced belief orbelief caused by the right fact is no more useful than having truebelief. If I were to stipulate a technical sense of foundationalKnowledge* according to which I foundationally know that Pwhen I believe truly that P and my belief isn't caused by anyother belief, there may well be all sorts of truths I“know”, but will having such knowledge do me any good asfar as putting me in a state that satisfies my philosophicalcuriosity?BibliographyArmstrong, David. 1973. Belief, Truth and Knowledge.London: Cambridge University Press.Ayer, A. J. 1956. The Problem of Knowledge. London:Cambridge University Press.BonJour, Laurence. 1985. The Structure of EmpiricalKnowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.-----. 2000. “Toward a Defense of EmpiricalFoundationalism.” In Resuurecting Old-FashionedFoundationalism, ed. Michael DePaul. Lanham, Ma.: Rowman andLittlefield.Fumerton, Richard. 1995. Metaepistemology and Skepticism.Lanham, Ma.: Rowman and Littlefield.Goldman, Alvin. 1979. “What is Justified Belief?” Pp. 1-23 inJustification and Knowledg, ed. George Pappas. Dordrecht:Reidel.-----. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press.-----. 1988. “Strong and Weak Justification.” Pp. 51-69 inPhilosophical Perspectives 2: Epistemology, ed. JamesTomberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview Publishing Co.Huemer, Michael. 2002. “Fumerton's Principle of InferentialJustification.” Journal of Philosophical Research, 27,329-40.Klein, Peter. 1998. “Foundationalism and the Infinite Regress ofReasons.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LVIII:919-26.Lehrer, Keith. 1974. Knowledge. Oxford: ClarendonPress.Mill, John Stuart. 1906. A System of Logic. London:Longmans, Green, and Co.Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Price, H. H. 1950. Perception. London: Methuen.Russell, Bertrand. 1910-11. “Knowledge by Acquaintance andKnowledge by Description.” The Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety, Vol. 11: 209-32.-----. Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript. Ed. byElizabeth Eames. London: Allen and Unwin Ltd.-----. 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. NewYork: Simon and Schuster.Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science Perception and Reality.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Williamson, Timothy. 2000. Knowledge and itsLimits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Other Internet Resources[Please contact the author with suggestions.] Related Entries justification, epistemic: coherentist theories of | justification, epistemic: internalist vs. externalist conceptions of Copyright © 2005 byRichard Fumerton<richard-fumerton@uiowa.edu> |
|
