Foundationalism - Two-tier Structure Of Justification, An Objection, Outstanding Challenges, Bibliography
belief true knowledge beliefs
Knowledge is more than true belief. True beliefs that come from just lucky guesswork do not qualify as knowledge. Knowledge requires that the satisfaction of its belief condition be appropriately related to the satisfaction of its truth condition. In other words, knowledge requires a justification condition. A knower must have an adequate indication that a known proposition is true. A traditional view, suggested by Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 B.C.E.) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), proposes that this adequate indication consists of evidence indicating that a proposition is true. This view requires that true beliefs qualifying as knowledge be based on justifying evidence, or reasons.
When reasons are beliefs, we have inferential justification: one belief is justified on the basis of another belief. How is the latter, supporting belief itself justified? Is another supporting belief always needed? According to foundationalism, another supporting belief is not always needed.
Additional Topics
Versions of foundationalism vary in explaining noninferential (foundational) justification, and in explaining how justification transmits from foundational beliefs to nonfoundational beliefs. Some philosophers have assumed that foundational beliefs must be certain (that is, indubitable or infallible). This leads to radical foundationalism, which requires that foundational beliefs be certain and th…
Wilfrid Sellars and Laurence BonJour have argued against non-inferential justification, on the ground that one is justified in holding a belief only if one has good reason to think that the belief is true. This ground, they suggest, implies that the justification of an alleged foundational belief will depend on an argument of this type: If the justification of alleged foundational beliefs depends …
Proponents of foundationalism must specify the exact conditions for noninferential justification. They must also specify the exact conditions for the transmission of justification from foundational beliefs to inferentially justified (nonfoundational) beliefs. Modest foundationalism, as noted above, allows for nondeductive, merely probabilistic connections that transfer justification from foundatio…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments