Routledge History of Philosophy: Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the Twentieth Century by John V. Canfield

Author:John V. Canfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

If the justification of one’s foundational beliefs depends on such an argument, those beliefs will not be foundational after all; for their justification will then depend on the justification of further beliefs: the beliefs represented by the premises of the argument (1)–(3).

It seems too demanding to hold that the justification of one’s belief that P requires one’s being justified in believing premises (1) and (2). Given that requirement, you will be justified in believing that P only if you are justified in believing that your belief that P has feature F. Further, given those requirements, you will be justified in believing that (1) your belief that P has F only if you are justified in believing an additional proposition: that (2) your belief that (1) has F. Given the requirements in question, we have no non-arbitrary way to avoid the troublesome implication that similar requirements apply not only to this latter proposition—viz. (2)—but also to each of the ensuing infinity of required justified beliefs. The problem is that we seem not to have the required infinity of increasingly complex justified beliefs.

An apparent lesson here is that if justificational support for a belief must be accessible to the believer, that accessibility should not itself be regarded as requiring further justified belief. Current debates over internalism and externalism regarding epistemic justification concern what sort of access, if any, one must have to the support for one’s justified beliefs. Internalism incorporates an accessibility requirement, of some sort, on what provides justification, whereas externalism does not. Debates over internalism and externalism are currently unresolved in contemporary epistemology.10

Foundationalists must explain not only the conditions for non-inferential justification, but also how justification transmits from foundational beliefs to inferentially justified, non-foundational beliefs. Modest foundationalists, unlike radical foundationalists, allow for non-deductive, merely probabilistic connections that transfer justification. They have not, however, reached agreement on the exact nature of such connections. Some modest foundationalists hold that some kind of ‘inference to a best explanation’ can account for transmission of justification in many cases. For example, the belief that there is a computer before me can, in certain circumstances, provide a best explanation of various foundational beliefs about my perceptual inputs. This, however, is a controversial matter among epistemologists.

A special problem troubles versions of foundationalism that restrict non-inferential justification to subjective beliefs about what one seems to see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Those versions must explain how such subjective beliefs can provide justification for beliefs about conceiver-independent physical objects. Clearly, such subjective beliefs do not logically entail beliefs about physical objects. Since extensive hallucination is always possible, it is always possible that one’s subjective beliefs are true while the relevant beliefs about physical objects are false. This consideration challenges foundationalists endorsing linguistic phenomenalism, the view that statements about physical objects can be translated without loss of meaning into logically equivalent statements solely about subjective states characterized by subjective beliefs.11 Perhaps a foundationalist, following Chisholm [7.23] and Cornman [7.27], can invoke a set of non-deductive relations to explain how subjective beliefs can justify beliefs about physical objects.

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