The chapter explores comparatively the attention to the practical dimension that—each in his own way—Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the classic pragmatist thinker William James pay when confronted with the challenge of providing a non-skeptical response to the relativist stance on truth that arose in the post-Kantian age. Particular focus will be given to the extent to which these three authors conceived of the practical framework as the only one that allows us to meaningfully address and determine truth.

This paper is an attempt to approach Stanley Fish’s anti-foundationalist argument whose clear formulation is found in the development of his literary theory. For this reason, we will start by, first, introducing Fish's literary theory, and, second, it is explored some aspects of Fish’s theories and their bonds with anti-foundationalism.

According to Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers, everything depends for its existence on something else. But what would a world devoid of fundamentalia look like? In this paper, I argue that the anti-foundationalist “neither-one-nor-many argument” of the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta commits him to a position I call “metaphysical indefinitism.” I demonstrate how this view follows from Śrīgupta’s rejection of mereological simples and ontologically independent being, when understood in light of his account of conventional reality. Contra recent claims in the secondary literature, (...) I clarify how the Madhyamaka metaphysical dependence structure is not a straightforward infinitism since it does not honor strict asymmetry or transitivity. Instead, its dependence relations are irreflexive and extendable, admitting of dependence chains of indefinite (though not actually infinite) length and dependence loops of non-zero length. Yet, the flexible ontology of Śrīgupta's Madhyamaka can accommodate a contextualist account of asymmetry and support a revisable theory of conventional truth, delivering significant payoffs for the view, including the capacity to accommodate developments in scientific explanation. (shrink)

The present paper argues that the Venezuelan-Chilean philosopher Andrés Bello constitutes an important but heretofore neglected prefiguration of Richard Rorty. I argue for this thesis by articulating first an Inter-American philosophical narrative (based on previous work by Alex Stehn and Carlos Sanchez) that enables me to highlight certain common characteristics in philosophical projects that flourished across the Americas. Having done this, I show that Rorty’s anti-representationalism and anti-foundationalism are prefigured in Bello’s most important philosophical treatise, Filosofía del (...) Entendimiento, to the extent that Bello recognizes the problems posed by the ocular metaphors that are systematically used by Early modern philosophers such as Descartes or Locke, and suggests their elimination and replacement by other metaphors. Finally, I conclude that, if my arguments are correct, the intellectual geography of neo-pragmatism needs to be expanded beyond traditional geographies such as Europe and the US. (shrink)

In this work, I discuss the role of Husserl’s phenomenology in Paolo Parrini’s positive philosophy. In the first section, I highlight the presence of both empiricist and constructivist elements in Parrini’s anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist conception of knowledge. In the second section, I stress Parrini’s acknowledgement of the crucial role of phenomenology in investigating the empirical basis of knowledge, thanks to its analysis of the relationship between form and matter of cognition. In the third section, I point out some (...) lines of development of the phenomenological form of empirical realism as revealed in Parrini’s reflection, through a comparison of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, Mary Hesse’s network model and the tradition of neutral monism. (shrink)

Social and political concepts are indispensable yet historically and culturally variable in a way that poses a challenge: how can we reconcile confident commitment to them with awareness of their contingency? In this article, we argue that available responses to this problem—Foundationalism, Ironism, and Right Wittgensteinianism—are unsatisfactory. Instead, we draw on the work of Bernard Williams to tease out and develop a Left Wittgensteinian response. In present-day pluralistic and historically self-conscious societies, mere confidence in our concepts is not enough. (...) For modern individuals who are ineluctably aware of conceptual change, engaged concept-use requires reasonable confidence, and in the absence of rational foundations, the possibility of reasonable confidence is tied to the possibility of critically discriminating between conceptual practices worth endorsing and those worth rejecting. We show that Left Wittgensteinianism offers such a basis for critical discrimination through point-based explanations of conceptual practices which relate them to the needs of concept-users. We end by considering how Left Wittgensteinianism guides our understanding of how conceptual practices can be revised in the face of new needs. (shrink)

In the past four years, a small but intense debate has transpired on the margins of mainstream scholarship in the discipline of Philosophy, particularly within the sub-field of American pragmatism. While most philosophical pragmatists dedicate their attention to questions concerning how ideas improve experience (or the theory-practice continuum), those participating in this exchange have shown greater concern for an issue that is, at its core, a theoretical matter: Does the theory of experience espoused by the classic American philosopher John Dewey (...) succumb to what contemporary analytic philosophers—for instance, Wilfred Sellars, Donald Davidson and John McDowell—call the Myth of the Given? One commentator, Scott Aikin, claims that Dewey relied on non-inferential and non-conceptual content or givens as perceptual inputs for cognitive experience. The upshot of Aikin’s objection is that these experiential givens constitute a proxy epistemological foundation for the beliefs that flow from inquiry—a position clearly in conflict with Dewey’s commitment to anti-foundationalism. The objection assumes a slightly different form in the hands of another scholar of American pragmatism, Colin Koopman. Gregory Pappas and David Hildebrand respond to Koopman’s version of the objection. The goals of this essay are to clarify the objection, highlight the stakes in the debate, identify misunderstandings of Dewey’s experiential metaphysics on both sides, and determine why the experiential givenism objection merits serious philosophical scrutiny in the future. (shrink)

This paper examines two central issues prompted by a recent critique of this Buddhist modernist phenomenon in Evan Thompson’s Why I Am Not a Buddhist: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in science. The main argument of this paper is that if Buddhism is to enter into a fruitful dialogue (...) with the mind sciences, it must be shown to complement the empirical claims to knowledge for which scientific naturalism so far provides the most viable basis. (shrink)

Canonical defenders of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), such as Leibniz and Spinoza, are metaphysical foundationalists of one stripe or another. This is curious since the PSR—which says that everything has a ground, cause, or explanation—in effect, denies fundamental entities. In this paper, I explore the apparent inconsistency between metaphysical foundationalism and approaches to metaphysical system building that are driven by a commitment to the PSR. I do so by analyzing how Indian Buddhist philosophers arrive at foundationalist and (...) anti-foundationalist positions motivated by implicit commitments to different versions of the PSR. I begin by introducing the Buddhist principle of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) as a proto-PSR that is restricted to causal explanation. Next, I show how Vasubandhu’s Sautrāntika Abhidharma metaphysics is shaped by a qualified commitment to both causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. I then reveal how Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka metaphysics is driven by an unrestricted and exceptionless commitment to causal and metaphysical grounding versions of the PSR. Finally, I consider how Nāgārjuna’s account may put him in a unique position to respond to a common contemporary objection to the PSR from necessitarianism. I conclude by addressing a competing interpretation on which Nāgārjuna is best understood as an anti-rationalist rather than an uber-rationalist, as I characterize him. (shrink)

This paper examines four central issues prompted by Thompson's recent critique of the Buddhist modernism phenomenon: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; (ii) the issue of what counts as the core and main trajectory of the Buddhist intellectual tradition; (iii) the scope of naturalism in the relation between science and metaphysics, and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of (...) progress in science. The main argument of this paper is that while the mind sciences may corroborate some aspects of the Buddhist model of mind, they also call into question some core Buddhist ideas. Hence, if Buddhism is to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the mind sciences, it must be shown to complement the empirical claims to knowledge for which scientific naturalism so far provides the most viable basis. (shrink)

The paper introduces Vailati’s life and works, investigating Vailati’s education, the relation to Peano and his school, and the interest for pragmatism and modernism. A detailed analysis of Vailati’s scientific and didactic activities, shows that he held, like Peano, a a strong interest for the history of science and a pluralist, anti-dogmatic and anti-foundationalist conception of definitions in mathematics, logic and philosophy of language. Vailati’s understanding of mathematical logic as a form of pragmatism is not a faithful interpretation (...) of Peano’s conception, but it is essential to understand the relations of Peano’s logic with other philosophical traditions and some epistemological aspects of Peano’s perspective, such as the search for a universal language. (shrink)

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with contingent creaturehood, (...) it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

The article aims to show that the criticism of the psychophysiological theory of cognition, formulated by Ingarden in the work U podstaw teorii poznania, is in some aspects still sound. The psychophysiological theory of cognition is the forerunner of modern naturalized epistemology. Therefore, the author of this article tries to show that Ingarden's critique applies to this modern epistemology. The work focuses on a selected aspect that occurs in both theories, i.e. the problem of causal generation of cognition. It also (...) focuses only on assessing the topicality of the two selected allegations that Ingarden formulated against the causal explanations of the possibility of knowledge, namely the objection of a vicious circle in theory and the objection that causal theory is unable to provide essential epistemological concepts and criteria necessary for the analysis of cognition. The author of the article defends the validity of the vicious circle objection by referring it to the problem of a causal vicious circle. He then shows the topicality of the second objection by showing that it can be interpreted as the claim that causal theory is incapable of solving the problem of causal underdetermination of cognition. This problem occurs irrespective of the adoption of foundationalism or anti-foundationalism in epistemology. (shrink)

In this work, I discuss the role of Husserl’s phenomenology in Paolo Parrini’s philosophical view. In the first section, I highlight the presence of both empiricist and constructivist elements in Parrini’s anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist conception of knowledge. In the second section, I stress Parrini’s acknowledgement of the crucial role of phenomenology in investigating the empirical basis of knowledge, thanks to its analysis of the relationship between form and matter of cognition. In the third section, I point at some (...) lines of development of phenomenology that are revealed by Parrini’s reflection, through the comparison between Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, Mary Hesse’s network model, and the tradition of neutral monism. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to clarify the heart of Dewey’s philosophy: his method (denotative method (DM) / pattern of inquiry (PI)). Despite the traditional understanding of Dewey as anti-foundationalist, I want to show that Dewey did have metaphysical foundations for his method: the principle of continuity or theory of emergentism. I also argue that Dewey’s metaphysical position is better named as ‘cultural emergentism’, rather than his own term ‘cultural naturalism’. What Dewey called ‘common sense’ in his Logic, Husserl (...) termed as the ‘life-world’ in his Crisis. I compare two perspectives of dealing with the phenomenon and conclude that for Dewey, the difference between natural sciences and the common sense inquiry is that of subject-matter but not of method. Thus, the goal is to find the unified method to be applied in both domains. Whereas Husserl was more pessimistic: for him, the difference was not only in subject-matter, but in the very methods. Following that discussion, I also attempt to reformulate the hard problem of consciousness in Deweyan terms. In the end, I compare Dewey’s DM / PI with Popper’s understandings of scientific method and conclude that there is no significant difference between the two and that Dewey’s method could also be looked at as hypothetic-deductive method, with the only difference in emphases. (shrink)

After a discussion of the fundamental tropes of Rorty’s philosophy, in and beyond Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, and after describing an imaginary conversation between Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida, and Dewey, the paper- a sort of monography in a nutshell- aims to shed new light on the strategic figure of the ironist as developed by Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Who really is the Rortyan ironist? A comparison between the ironist and the Platonic character of Callicles clearly shows that (...) Rorty’s irony does not correspond to Socratic or Platonic irony. From a close reading of relevant texts three ideas emerge: first, one can take an ironic stance despite its ability to support divergent metaphysical premises –Callicles is ironic in tone but foundationalist in metaphysics- while Rorty’s pragmatist appears ironic in tone and anti-foundationalist in metaphysics. Second, Callicles is a sort of public ironist; he feels pathos for the demos and the Athenian popular assembly, while the Rorty’s ironist appears as a private ironist looking for a hypothetical and detached conversation. And third, from the theatrical and literary point of view, Rorty’s ironist lacks the Greek character, the Greek mask, and Greek comicality. (shrink)

When is a testimony-based belief justified? According to so-called "Anti-Reductionism," the principle that a hearer is prima facie justified to take what another tells them at face value is true. I call this position "Liberal Foundationalism." I call it "liberal" for it is more liberal than "Moderate Foundationalism" that holds that perception-based beliefs are prima facie justified but testimony-based beliefs are not. Liberal Foundationalism has two interpretations: the principle is a contingent empirical truth, or an a (...) priori necessary truth. I call the view that the principle is a priori necessary "Liberal Fundamentalism." This chapter defends Liberal Fundamentalism against objections in the first half, and then in the second half it introduces "Weak Liberal Fundamentalism," the view that it is a priori necessary that testimony provides some epistemic support, but perhaps not enough, absent defeat, for knowledge. In later work I abandon the view that the principle is a priori necessary, but I still maintain the distinction between Strong and Weak variants of the principle, and the replies to many of the objections to the principle. (shrink)

I will compare Lehrer’s anti-skeptical strategy from a coherentist point of view with the anti-skeptical strategy of the Mooreans. I will argue that there are strong similarities between them: neither can present a persuasive argument to the skeptic and both face the problem of easy knowledge in one way or another. However, both can offer a complete and self-explanatory explanation of knowledge although Mooreanism can offer the more natural one. Hence, one has good reasons to prefer Mooreanism to (...) Lehrer’s anti-skeptical approach, if one does not prefer coherentism to foundationalism for other reasons. (shrink)

Our moral convictions cannot, on the face of it, count in evidence against scientific claims with which they happen to conflict. Moral anti-realists of whatever stripe can explain this easily: science is immune to moral refutation because moral discourse is defective as a trustworthy source of true and objective judgments. Moral realists, they can add, are unable to explain this immunity. After describing how anti-realists might implement this reasoning, the paper argues that the only plausible realist comeback turns (...) on the practical nature of moral reasoning. This comeback, however, places significant constraints on the structure of evidence for moral judgments. These constraints cannot be met by coherentist defenders of reflective-equilibrium methodology or by anyone sympathetic to bottom-up, case-driven foundationalism, including those who claim we have perceptual or perception-like access to moral truths. Unfortunately for realists in these categories, alternative realism-friendly accounts of science’s apparent moral immunity are unpromising. These neither explain nor explain away our unwillingness to infer an is from an ought, as Hume might have put it. Science’s apparent immunity to moral refutation therefore poses a serious problem for any realist unhappy with top-down, theory-driven conceptions of the structure of moral evidence. (shrink)

While Cavell is well known for his reinterpretation of the later Wittgenstein, he has never really engaged himself with post-Investigations writings like On Certainty. This collection may, however, seem to undermine the profoundly anti-dogmatic reading of Wittgenstein that Cavell has developed. In addition to apparently arguing against what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ – a phrase contested by other Wittgensteinians – On Certainty may seem to justify the rejection of whoever dares to question one’s basic presuppositions. According to (...) On Certainty, or so it seems, the only right response to someone with different certainties is a reproach like ‘Fool!’ or ‘Heretic!’. This article aims to show that On Certainty need not be taken to prove Cavell wrong. It explains that Wittgenstein, in line with the first two parts of The Claim of Reason, does not reject scepticism out of hand but rather questions the sceptic’s self-understanding. Using arguments from Part Three of The Claim, the article moreover argues that a confrontation with divergence calls for self-examination rather than self-righteousness. Precisely because Wittgenstein acknowledges ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ or, in Cavellian terms, ‘the truth of skepticism’, he is not the authoritarian thinker that some have taken him to be. (shrink)

Chapter 2 primarily discusses Bernstein’s account and its differences both from Nagle’s metaphysical realism and Rorty’s postmodern pragmatism. Trying to diagnose assumptions that polarize thinkers to become objectivists and relativists, Bernstein articulates a Cartesian Anxiety he thinks they ironically both share. Descartes’ anti-skeptical wave of rigor was presented as a rationalistic project of rebuilding an unstable and dilapidated ‘house of knowledge’ on secure philosophical and scientific foundations. His overtly foundationalist metaphor of rebuilding from timbers set “in rock or hard (...) clay” shapes Descartes’ attempt to refute the skeptic and to secure the objectivity of knowledge as pursued by a more rigorous and analytical method of knowing. (shrink)

This chapter states the contrast between presumptivism about testimonial warrant (often called anti-reductionism) and strict reductionism (associated with Hume) about testimonial warrant. Presumptivism sees an analogy with modest foundationalism about perceptual warrant. Strict reductionism denies this analogy. Two theoretical frameworks for these positions are introduced to better formulate the most popular version of persumptivism, a competence reliabilist account. Seven arguments against presumptivism are then stated and critiqued: (1) The argument from reliability; (2) The argument from reasons; (3) the (...) argument from positive reasons; (4) the argument from negative reasons; (5) the argument from agency; (6) the argument from psychological force; and (7) the argument from gullibility. If presumptivm is false, it is not for any of these arguments. (shrink)

In his ?Nihilism, Skepticism, and Philosophical Method,? Paul Thagard claims that my critique of his The Brain and the Meaning of Life misapprehends his argument. According to Thagard, the critique wrongly assumes that the book offers foundationalist justifications for Thagard's views whereas, in fact, the justifications his book presents are coherentist. In my response, I show that the claim that my critique depends on foundationalist assumptions is ungrounded. Moreover, the appeal to coherentist rather than foundationalist justifications does not salvage Thagard's (...) discussion, since it is problematic under both foundationalism and coherentism. Thagard does not show that the anti-nihilist position he supports is more coherent than the nihilist position he rejects, and brain research does not justify his claims about the meaning of life under coherentism any more than under foundationalism. (shrink)

The paper begins by drawing a number of ‘levels’ distinctions in epistemology. It notes that a theory of knowledge must be an attempt to obtain knowledge . It is suggested that we can make sense of much of the work found in analytic theory of knowledge by seeing three framework assumptions as underpinning this work. First, that to have philosophical knowledge of knowledge requires us to have an analysis. Second, that much of what we require from a theory of knowledge (...) may be obtained by developing such analyses of first-order, concrete, empirical, propositional knowledge. Third, that the final arbiter of the correctness of such analyses is to be the carefully examined intuitions of the epistemologist. The paper attacks each aspect of this framework on the ground that this methodology will precisely not give us knowledge . In passing, comparisons are drawn with arguments that led to the demise of phenomenalism. The paper concludes with remarks about realism/anti-realism and consensus/disagreement in analytic epistemology. The paper recommends that we seek to develop theories of knowledge rather than analyses, and defends the position that such theories will precisely not be analyses. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the relationship between methodological individualism (MI) and reductionism. While the latter term is mainly used in reference to MI with a negative meaning, i.e. as a synonym of a naively atomistic and non-structural approach, it is also, though rarely, used to couch MI in terms of a non-atomistic micro-foundationalism that is compatible with systemic explanations (e.g. Elster). This chapter investigates the legitimacy of the pejorative use of the term reductionism with respect to MI. Three points are (...) developed. First, the chapter argues that two different kinds of interpretation of MI in terms of naively atomistic reductionism can be distinguished: one in terms of psychological reductionism and the other in terms of semantic reductionism, the latter of which has a nominalist and an anti-nominalist variant. Second, the chapter explains why the different interpretations of MI in terms of naively atomistic reductionism are unfounded. Third, the chapter analyzes and criticizes the view that MI must be replaced by a new anti-reductionist approach understood as a middle ground between holism and MI. (shrink)

The theory of recognition arises within Hegel's confrontation with epistemological skepticism and aims at responding to the questions raised by modern skepticism concerning the accessibility of the external world, of other minds, and of one's own mind. This is possible to the extent that the theory of recognition is the guiding thread of a critique of the modern foundational theory of knowledge and, at the same time, the point of departure for an alternative approach. In this article I will dwell (...) on six stages of the evolution of Hegel's thought prior to the Phenomenology (1797-1806),stages shed great light on the direction taken by his argumentative strategy. Synthetically, the stages are as follows: 1. Hegel naturalizes the epistemological questions; 2. to do so he critiques foundationalism qua theory of empirical knowledge; 3. and qua theory of epistemic justification; 4. the critique of foundationalism is linked to a critique of the corresponding representationalistic theory of perception; 5. this, in turn, is linked to a critique of the monological theories of self-consciousness and to the development of a model of the rise of self-conscious knowing; 6. finally, Hegel synthesizes these epistemological views in a theory of knowledge qua recognition and in a metaphilosophical theory of philosophical rationality qua self-recognition: knowledge without foundation is thus the condition of possibility of philosophy’s self-justification. (shrink)

Some facts ground other facts. Some fact is fundamental iff there are no other facts which partially or fully ground that fact. According to metaphysical foundationalism, every non-fundamental fact is fully grounded by some fundamental fact(s). In this paper I examine and defend some neglected considerations which might be made in favor of metaphysical foundationalism. Building off of work by Ross Cameron, I suggest that foundationalist theories are more unified than, and so in one important respect simpler than, (...) non-foundationalist theories, insofar as foundationalist theories allow us to derive all non-fundamental facts from some fundamental fact(s). Non-foundationalist theories can enjoy a similar sort of theoretical unification only by taking on objectionable metaphysical laws. (shrink)

Memory has eluded a unified philosophical analysis for millennia because memory isn’t a single type of mental state. On a standard classification, procedural memory is memory of how to do things, semantic memory is memory of facts or fact-like propositions and episodic memory is memory of events in which you partook. Autobiographical memory is memory of what happened in your past in real-life cases. Empirical studies suggest that autobiographical memory is a construction of pieces of past experiences. This points to (...) a view of memory according to which we have no direct awareness of what happened in the past and hence no internal justification of what we seem to remember happened. Here I argue that a version of phenomenal dogmatism, the view that seemings can justify higher-order mental states immediately and fully in the absence of defeaters, is plausible for memories and that it bypasses a common route from a constructionist view of memory to skepticism about the past. (shrink)

Infinitists argue that their view outshines foundationalism because infinitism can, whereas foundationalism cannot, explain two of epistemic justification’s crucial features: it comes in degrees and it can be complete. I present four different ways that foundationalists could make sense of those two features of justification, thereby undermining the case for infinitism.

According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember (...) that P while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection. (shrink)

According to foundationalism, some beliefs are justified but do not depend for their justification on any other beliefs. According to access internalism, a subject is justified in believing some proposition only if that subject is aware of or has access to some reason to think that the proposition is true or probable. In this paper I discusses a fundamental challenge to internalist foundationalism often referred to as the Sellarsian dilemma. I consider three attempts to respond to the dilemma (...) – phenomenal conservatism, BonJour’s classical foundationalism, and Fumerton’s classical foundationalism. I argue that, of these three, only the last seems to avoid getting impaled on one or the other horn of the dilemma. I end by responding to some concerns with Fumerton’s account. (shrink)

In Justification without Awareness (2006), Michael Bergmann presents a dilemma for internalism from which he claims there is “no escape”: The awareness allegedly required for justification is either strong awareness, which involves conceiving of some justification-contributor as relevant to the truth of a belief, or weak awareness, which does not. Bergmann argues that the former leads to an infinite regress of justifiers, while the latter conflicts with the “clearest and most compelling” motivation for endorsing internalism, namely, that for a belief (...) to be justified its truth must not be an accident from the subject’s perspective. Bergmann’s dilemma might initially seem to have the force of a knock-down argument against the classical foundationalist accounts he considers, if not against all forms of internalism. I argue, however, that the weak-awareness horn of Bergmann’s dilemma is unsuccessful. Classical foundationalists can hold on to the main motivation for internalism and avoid a vicious regress of justifiers. (shrink)

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and (...) constructivists) could respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally. (shrink)

This chapter has two goals: to motivate the foundationalist solution to the regress problem and to defend it against arguments from Sellars, BonJour and Klein. Both the motivation and the defence of foundationalism raise larger questions about the relationship between foundationalism and access internalism. I argue that foundationalism is not in conflict with access internalism, despite influential arguments to the contrary, and that access internalism in fact supplies a theoretical motivation for foundationalism. I conclude that (...) class='Hi'>foundationalism and access internalism form a coherent and well-motivated package. (shrink)

There has been an explosion of interest in the metaphysics of fundamentality in recent decades. The consensus view, called metaphysical foundationalism, maintains that there is something absolutely fundamental in reality upon which everything else depends. However, a number of thinkers have chal- lenged the arguments in favor of foundationalism and have proposed competing non-foundationalist ontologies. This paper provides a systematic and critical introduction to metaphysical foundationalism in the current literature and argues that its relation to ontological dependence (...) and substance should be qualified in important ways. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in epistemology on the structure of justification. Some recent work in formal epistemology promises to shed some new light on that debate. I have in mind here some recent work by David Atkinson and Jeanne Peijnenburg, hereafter “A&P”, on infinite regresses of probabilistic support. A&P show that there are probability distributions defined over an infinite set of propositions {\ such that \ is probabilistically supported by \ for all i and \ has a high probability. (...) Let this result be “APR”. A&P oftentimes write as though they believe that APR runs counter to foundationalism. This makes sense, since there is some prima facie plausibility in the idea that APR runs counter to foundationalism, and since some prominent foundationalists argue for theses inconsistent with APR. I argue, though, that in fact APR does not run counter to foundationalism. I further argue that there is a place in foundationalism for infinite regresses of probabilistic support. (shrink)

An influential tradition in the philosophy of causation has it that all token causal facts are, or are reducible to, facts about difference-making. Challenges to this tradition have typically focused on pre-emption cases, in which a cause apparently fails to make a difference to its effect. However, a novel challenge to the difference-making approach has recently been issued by Alyssa Ney. Ney defends causal foundationalism, which she characterizes as the thesis that facts about difference-making depend upon facts about physical (...) causation. She takes this to imply that causation is not fundamentally a matter of difference-making. In this paper, I defend the difference-making approach against Ney’s argument. I also offer some positive reasons for thinking, pace Ney, that causation is fundamentally a matter of difference-making. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that internalistic foundationalist theories of the justification of memory belief are inadequate. Taking a discussion of John Pollock as a starting point, I argue against any theory that requires a memory belief to be based on a phenomenal state in order to be justified. I then consider another version of internalistic foundationalism and claim that it, too, is open to important objections. Finally, I note that both varieties of foundationalism fail to account for (...) the epistemic status of our justified nonoccurrent beliefs, and hence are drastically incomplete. (shrink)

Semantic holists view what one's terms mean as function of all of one's usage. Holists will thus be coherentists about semantic justification: showing that one's usage of a term is semantically justified involves showing how it coheres with the rest of one's usage. Semantic atomists, by contrast, understand semantic justification in a foundationalist fashion. Saul Kripke has, on Wittgenstein's behalf, famously argued for a type of skepticism about meaning and semantic justification. However, Kripke's argument has bite only if one understands (...) semantic justification in foundationalist terms. Consequently, Kripke's arguments lead not to a type of skepticism about meaning, but rather to the conclusion that one should be a coherentist about semantic justification, and thus a holist about semantic facts. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the thesis that logic is not special. In this paper, I consider, and reject, a challenge to this thesis. According to this challenge, there are basic logical principles, and part of what makes such principles basic is that they are epistemically exceptional. Thus, according to this challenge, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to reject anti-exceptionalism about logic. I argue that this challenge fails, and that the exceptionalist positions motivated by it are (...) thus unfounded. I make this case by disambiguating two senses of ‘basic’ and showing that, once this disambiguation is taken into account, the best reason we have for thinking that there are basic principles actually implies that those principles do not require a special epistemology. Consequently, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to accept, rather than reject, anti-exceptionalism concerning the epistemology of logic. I conclude by explaining how an abductivist, anti-exceptionalist approach to the epistemology of logic can accommodate the notion of basic logical principles. (shrink)

Foundationalists distinguish basic from nonbasic beliefs. At a first approximation, to say that a belief of a person is basic is to say that it is epistemically justified and it owes its justification to something other than her other beliefs, where “belief” refers to the mental state that goes by that name. To say that a belief of a person is nonbasic is to say that it is epistemically justified and not basic. Two theses constitute Foundationalism: (a) Minimality: There (...) are some basic beliefs, and (b) Exclusivity: If there are any nonbasic beliefs, that is solely because they (ultimately) owe their justification to some basic belief. Proponents of Minimality but not Exclusivity endorse Minimal Foundationalism. Proponents of Exclusivity but not Minimality endorse either Epistemic Nihilism, the view that there are no justified beliefs, or some non-foundationalist epistemology such as Coherentism or Infinitism. In this essay I aim to characterize the notion of a basic belief more precisely and to assess some arguments for and against Foundationalism. In the process, I hope to exhibit the resilience and attractiveness of Foundationalism. (shrink)

The phenomenon of knowledge is a fundamental issue in epistemology as a main branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge related problems. Over time, epistemologists attempted to give us or provide clues as to what reality actually is, that is the question of the certainty of knowledge has always been topical in any epistemic enterprise. The search for knowledge becomes more cumbersome when one considers the challenge of the skeptics and sophists about the ability of man knowing anything for certain. To (...) some philosophers, the emergence of the skeptics’ challenge is seen as an attempt to bring this noble enterprise into a quagmire. However, the introduction of Descartes foundationalism opens a new chapter and a serious challenge to the skeptics' position on the certainty of knowledge. Consequently, many have asked the question: is Descartes foundationalism merely an answer to the skeptic's challenge or a way forward for epistemology? This paper examines this question with a view to asserting a position regarding the issue, which is that it is both a response and a way forward for epistemology. (shrink)

A foundationalist account of the justification of our empirical beliefs is committed to the following two claims: (1) Sense experience is a source of justification. (2) Some empirical beliefs are basic: justified without receiving their justification from any other beliefs. In this paper, I will defend each of these claims against an objection. The objection to (1) that I will discuss is due to Donald Davidson. He writes: The relation between a sensation and a belief cannot be logical, since sensations (...) are not beliefs or other propositional attitudes. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in this sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs. But a causal explanation of a belief does not show how or why the belief is justified. [1] There are two important thoughts in this passage. The first of these is explicitly expressed, the second implied: (3) Sense-experiential states are devoid of propositional content. (4) Necessarily, if a mental state can play the role of a justifier, it has propositional content. (3) and (4) entail that a sense-experiential state cannot play the role of a justifier. If that is true, then (1) is false. This, in any case, seems to me to be Davidson's argument. In response to it, I accept (4) but reject (3). This is an unusual move for foundationalists, who tend to accept (3) and deny (4). Nevertheless, it is what I take to be the right move. (shrink)

For Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge is the result of what he calls ‘intellectual learning’, a process in which the knowledge of a conclusion depends on previous knowledge of the premises. Since demonstrations are ultimately based on indemonstrable principles (the knowledge of which is called ‘νοῦς’), Aristotle is often described as advancing a foundationalist doctrine. Without disputing the nomenclature, I shall attempt to show that Aristotle’s ‘foundationalism’ should not be taken as a rationalist theory of epistemic justification, as if the first (...) principles of science could be known as such independently of their explanatory connections to demonstrable propositions. I shall argue that knowing first principles as such involves knowing them as explanatory of other scientific propositions. I shall then explain in which way noetic and demonstrative knowledge are in a sense interdependent cognitive states – even though νοῦς remains distinct from (and, in Aristotle’s words, more ‘accurate’ than) demonstrative knowledge. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualists about knowledge-how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti-intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge-how to φ. John Bengson & Marc Moffett (2009; 2011a; 2011b) and Carlotta Pavese (2015a; 2015b) have embraced precisely (...) this strategy and have thus claimed, for different reasons, that anti-intellectualism is defective on the grounds that possessing the ability to φ is not sufficient for knowing how to φ. We investigate this strategy of argument-by-counterexample to the anti- intellectualist’s sufficiency thesis and show that, at the end of the day, anti-intellectualism remains unscathed. (shrink)

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I (...) argue that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations. (shrink)

Foundationalism is false; after all, foundational beliefs are arbitrary, they do not solve the epistemic regress problem, and they cannot exist withoutother (justified) beliefs. Or so some people say. In this essay, we assess some arguments based on such claims, arguments suggested in recent work by Peter Klein and Ernest Sosa.