Foundationalism

A distinctive feature of Juan Comesaña's epistemological account is the possibility of an agent possessing a false proposition as evidence. Comesaña argues that there are a number of theoretical virtues of his account once we accept this possibility, however, one might expect that there are particular vices of his account as well. Littlejohn and Dutant (2021) claim that a reflective agent who accepts Comesaña's view is rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be (...) guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: evidence in general can be false, but my evidence is never false. I argue that parallel reasoning applies to any epistemological view that says that it is possible for a rational agent to be wrong about what their evidence is. When a rational agent reflectively accepts that they could be wrong about their evidence they are rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: even though rational agents in general are wrong about their evidence, I'm never wrong about my evidence. Reflecting on a particular challenge to Comesaña's view ultimately reveals a general challenge to fallibilism. (shrink)

For Kant, “thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind” (KrV, A51/B75). This formula was directed against the conception of concepts held by authors such as Wolff and Baumgarten, who regarded as empty only those concepts whose content is contradictory. According to these thinkers, concepts whose content is possible are not empty, since their content consists in the sum of the determinations that define that content as such. For Kant, by contrast, even concepts of possible contents are empty, (...) since, taken as such, they do not yield knowledge of an actually existing object; for this, an empirical intuition grounded in perception is required. Hegel, for his part, disputes the claim that the content of empirical intuitions contains anything more than its own determinate content. But if both the content of concepts and that of empirical intuitions are merely possible, when and how does the mind come into contact with the real world? For the explanatory model proposed by Hegel, this apparent problem rests on a fallacious line of argument, namely, that if both concepts and empirical intuitions are empty, then the totality formed by the two cannot itself be anything but empty. On the contrary, for Hegel the reference of contents to the real world results from the coherent system that mediates all determinate contents among themselves; the way in which concepts and empirical intuitions acquire their reference to the world is precisely through this totality insofar as it singularizes itself within itself as a concrete, particular object. (shrink)

This work develops a unified normative framework for Bioethics and Environmental Ethics grounded in the Minimal Existential Pursuit Right (MEPR) and the Universal Ontological Formula (UOF). Departing from moral theories that rely on intuition, cultural consensus, or substantive value assumptions, the framework reconstructs normativity from the structural conditions required for the existence of a first-person normative subject. -/- At the core of the theory is the concept of an ontological boundary, defined as the minimal condition enabling a subject to sustain (...) internal motion, self-positioning, and normative utterance. The violation of this boundary is shown not merely to constitute moral wrongdoing, but to result in a structural collapse of normative validity itself. Ethical obligation, therefore, is not derived from external moral properties or subjective preferences, but emerges as a logical necessity inherent in the preservation of subjectivity. -/- Within Bioethics and Biomedicine, the framework provides a substrate-neutral criterion for evaluating practices such as instrumentalization, coercion, and technological intervention, without recourse to biological essentialism or anthropocentric bias. In Environmental Ethics, it reconceptualizes ecological preservation as the infrastructural condition for the continued existence of normative agents, thereby resolving tensions between anthropocentric and biocentric approaches. -/- By isolating minimal existential thresholds (MFCS/AEPS) and distinguishing logical necessity from policy discretion, this work offers a non-presumptive, structurally closed foundation for ethical and legal reasoning under conditions of technological acceleration and ecological instability. (shrink)

Hegel indicates throughout his writings that the claims most pivotal to his system of philosophical science receive their proof only in logic itself. And yet, Hegel has surprisingly little to say in either the Encyclopaedia Logic or the Science of Logic itself about what he means by ‘proof’ or what sort of proof procedure it is that he thinks is suited to meet such a demand. In this paper, I develop an account of the proof procedure at work in the (...) Logic by considering Hegel’s treatment of the traditional proofs of God’s existence (specifically, the ontological and the cosmological arguments) that he offers in the logical writings and in his Religionsphilosophie. I develop this account through the speculative reconstruction of the traditional arguments of natural theology that Hegel offers in his 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the 1829 Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God where, I argue, these arguments are divested of their syllogistic form and reformulated on the model of conceptual mediation. In the end, I explain how this account of the Logic’s proof procedure sheds light on two lingering interpretive issues in Hegel’s metaphysics: its relationship to the ontological argument and its solution to ‘the problem of beginning’. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonian Skeptic’s Agrippa Trilemma asserts that any knowledge claim is doomed to infinite regress, arbitrary dogmatism, or circular reasoning. This paper argues that the Trilemma is an axiomatic consequence of the historical reliance on the problematic Justified True Belief (JTB) definition and the failure to rigorously define the necessary structure of conscious inquiry. This paper introduces the Gageian Epistemic Model (GEM), a descriptive meta-epistemology that formalizes the mandatory procedure of conscious warrant into the PIE Sequence (P1-P5). The GEM offers (...) a unique, structural response to the Trilemma: the infinite regress is terminated by the self-vindicating, structurally mandated axiom, P1: The Axiom of Subjective State (S). Arbitrariness is overcome by demonstrating the structural necessity of P3 (the Goal of resolution), and circularity is controlled by establishing two distinct, warranted standards for belief. The GEM formalizes all warranted belief across two categories: Intrinsic Knowledge as Justified Coherent Belief (JCB), warranted by internal coherence via P4, and Extrinsic Knowledge as Justified Reliable Belief (JRB), warranted by external predictive success via P5. This axiomatic procedure provides the foundational justification for the methodology of modern science and mathematics, proving it is the only structurally defensible path available to a conscious agent. (shrink)

This chapter argues against experiential moral foundationalism, the thesis that experience is a source of foundational knowledge about morality. To provide us with foundational moral knowledge, experience must not only represent moral facts, but it must also block the regress of justification: it must justify belief without standing in need of any justification. I’ll argue that no experience satisfies both criteria. Perceptual experience blocks the regress of justification, it doesn’t represent moral facts. In contrast, some non-perceptual experiences represent moral facts, (...) including experiences of moral emotion and moral intuition, but they cannot block the regress of justification. Hence, I conclude, no experience can give us foundational moral knowledge. (shrink)

This paper develops a comprehensive epistemological framework that addresses one of philosophy's most persistent puzzles: why intelligent, rational persons examining identical evidence often reach contradictory conclusions. Building upon the Fragment Theory of Knowledge, we argue that human cognition operates through necessarily partial access to a reality of incommensurable complexity, constrained by fundamental physical, cognitive, and socio-cultural limitations. Knowledge formation is not merely the accumulation of data but the integration of experiential fragments into coherent wholes. Crucially, we demonstrate that this integration (...) requirement is not merely epistemological but reflects the ontological structure of reality itself— information never exists in isolation but only in interconnected bundles at every level of existence. We demonstrate that belief is epistemically foundational, that proper integration requires both foundational beliefs and evidential reasoning, that abstraction must remain grounded, and that every epistemic commitment exists within a holistic web of belief. This framework has profound implications for understanding rational disagreement, showing that belief assessment requires evaluating total worldview integration rather than isolated propositions. (shrink)

Modern science—and most theories of laws—are built around regularity (i.e., patterns that repeat or persist). Yet much of what we meet looks irregular. Irregularity Theory (IT) starts there. It asks what irregularity is, and what must be true of a world in which irregularities can appear at all. The answer is strict: even irregularity presupposes persisting order—a minimal structure that endures across neighbouring instants so that we can re-identify items through change and make sense of interactions across moments. From this, (...) a conditional follows wherever anything exists in our universe (or, more generally, in any domain), some persisting order must obtain. In that sense Absolute Irregularity—the total absence of any persisting order—is incompatible with existence. The result is not a theory of law; it is a pre-nomic constraint that any account of laws must respect. It clarifies how widespread irregular appearances can coexist with minimal order, and it sets the groundwork for further papers on Descartes’ cogito, reducing Foundationalism to physics, explaining why anything exists, and comparisons across law-theories (Humean Best-System: Lewis 1986; anti-Humean constraint/governing views: Maudlin 2007; for irregularity context: Miller 2014a). (shrink)

Distinguishing between sane religious beliefs and delusions is conceptually difficult, as both can exhibit epistemic features such as resistance to widely accepted counter-evidence. This paper challenges three existing approaches to this distinction before proposing a fourth alternative, while exploring its implications for the epistemology of religion debates on evidentialism, fideism, and Reformed epistemology. -/- The first approach argues that delusions are not sincere beliefs while religious beliefs are. The second, evidentialist approach, claims that delusions are not evidence-responsive, while religious beliefs (...) are. However, this risks cultural chauvinism by privileging one tradition’s evidence-responsiveness over another’s. The third, fideist approach, distinguishes delusions as pathological or culturally unacceptable, unlike religious beliefs, collapsing into over-relativism. -/- The fourth, warrant-based approach adapted from Reformed epistemology, resolves these issues by distinguishing delusions as unwarranted due to their being caused by cognitive malfunction, while granting warrant to religious beliefs formed under reliable faculties and aimed at truth. This method provides a culturally sensitive yet objective framework. (shrink)

One thing all forms of foundationalism have in common is that they hold that a belief can be justified noninferentially–i.e., that its justification need not depend on its being inferred from some other justified (or unjustified) belief. In some recent publications, Peter Klein argues that in virtue of having this feature, all forms of foundationalism are infected with an unacceptable arbitrariness that makes it irrational to be a practicing foundationalist. In this paper, I will explain why his objections to foundationalism (...) fail. (shrink)

This thesis provides a comprehensive follow-up to previous work dismantling grounding theory by addressing the most sophisticated defenses that have emerged in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Through formal mathematical analysis, systematic responses to pluralist strategies, empirical case studies, and methodological innovations, this work demonstrates that grounding theory cannot be salvaged through any of its current defensive strategies. The thesis advances a positive post-foundationalist framework based on Dynamic Process Networks that provides superior explanatory power while accommodating the fundamental instability revealed by contemporary (...) science and social reality. Key contributions include: (1) formal mathematical proofs that Ontological Instability violates all essential properties of grounding relations, (2) systematic refutation of primitivist, circular, pluralist, and deflationary defenses, (3) empirical validation through AI ethics, quantum mechanics, and social identity case studies, (4) development of transformation networks as a viable alternative to grounding hierarchies, and (5) methodological innovations for post-foundationalist metaphysical practice. The work establishes that the foundationalist project in metaphysics has reached its theoretical limits and must be replaced by approaches that can work productively with rather than against fundamental instability. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic critique of contemporary foundationalist metaphysics, specifically targeting grounding theory and dispositional essentialism through the lens of Ontological Instability. I argue that stability-based theories in analytic metaphysics are not merely empirically inadequate but logically impossible. Through three interconnected mechanisms—the Stabilization Paradox, Temporal Contradiction, and Relational Undermining—I demonstrate that foundationalist approaches necessarily undermine themselves. The paper provides detailed reductio ad absurdum arguments against Jonathan Schaffer's grounding theory and Alexander Bird's dispositional essentialism, supported by case studies from quantum (...) mechanics. I conclude that Ontological Instability represents a fundamental logical constraint that necessitates the development of post-foundationalist metaphysics based on dynamic processes rather than stable foundations. (shrink)

Epistemic Justification illuminates in a deep way some core issues in contemporary epistemology. Its two authors disagree sharply about the nature of epistemic justification: both are foundationalists but whereas BonJour is a staunch defender of a traditional version of internalist foundationalism, Sosa argues for an externalist virtue reliabilism. In spite of their differences they speak the same language and employ the same rigorous standards for philosophical interchange. They most assuredly do not talk past each other. In part because of this, (...) but also in part because of the philosophical experience and insightfulness of the authors, we very quickly get to the topic at the heart of their disagreement: the question whether justification requires the subject to be aware of what her belief has going for it. BonJour says yes and Sosa says no. Both recognize that there are difficulties to be faced on either side of the debate. The great value of this book lies in the persuasiveness with which the authors press these difficulties and the vigor with which they resist them—something that is all the more impressive given their focus on introspective beliefs, the grounding of which is significantly more difficult to think and write clearly about than is the grounding of perceptual beliefs. Indeed, it is largely because of this careful discussion of the justification of introspective belief that the exchange is so rewarding. (shrink)

This thesis examines the profound transformation of epistemology necessitated by the establishment of Ontological Instability as a fundamental principle of existence. If being itself is inherently unstable—characterized by creative becoming rather than stable being—then traditional epistemology, built upon assumptions of stable objects of knowledge, stable knowing subjects, and stable methods of inquiry, becomes not merely inadequate but logically impossible. This investigation develops Fluctuational Epistemology as a comprehensive alternative that embraces instability as the creative condition making knowledge possible. Through rigorous philosophical (...) analysis, novel conceptual development, and systematic exploration of practical implications, this work establishes the foundations for an entirely new epistemological field that can operate within conditions of fundamental instability. The thesis demonstrates that what traditional epistemology treats as obstacles—uncertainty, temporality, relationality—are actually the creative conditions that make knowledge possible in the first place. This represents a paradigm shift comparable to the transition from classical to quantum physics, with equally profound implications for how we understand truth, inquiry, and the possibilities for human understanding. (shrink)

The established view about regress problems has it that they, roughly speaking, come in only one variety. This view is mistaken. Two types of problems are typically subsumed under the label of regress problems – stopping problems and starting problems. Both problem types share the same surface structure in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but their deeper founding structure reveals some key differences. Stopping problems rely on a regress clause, raise the question whether infinite chains are possible, and present (...) terminatism, infinitism, and nihilism as potential solutions. In contrast, standard starting problems, which many regress problems are, rely on a founding clause and not on a regress clause, do not raise questions about the possibility of infinite chains, and offer only two potential solutions, terminatism and nihilism. Non-standard starting problems also allow for infinitism as a viable solution, but nevertheless they differ structurally in various aspects from stopping problems. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to argue that the foundations of epistemology are grounded in the theory of rational action. Specifically, I will articulate and defend a version of internalist foundationalism based on a distinctive, action‐theoretic version of non‐doxastic justification. The motivating idea is that the justification for our foundational beliefs is inherited from our justification for antecedent doxastic actions, acts of belief formation, or acceptance. These doxastic actions are members of a general class of actions that I call (...) non‐deliberative responses (NDRs). While NDRs are non‐deliberative, I argue that we can make clear sense of the idea that they have both motivating and normative reasons and, consequently, that their performance is normatively evaluable. If this strategy is successful, the justification of our doxastic actions (and, via the inheritance principle, our beliefs) will be subsumed under more general principles of justified action. (shrink)

“The beginning of philosophy must be either something mediated or something immediate, and it is easy to show that it can be neither the one nor the other; so either way of beginning runs into contradiction” (WL: 45/5:65). In these words, Hegel articulates what has come to be known as the ‘problem of beginning’, a problem that would seem to challenge the very possibility of legitimate philosophical inquiry. In his recent book, Hegel and the Problem of Beginning, Robb Dunphy makes (...) a compelling case that Hegel not only sought to resolve this notorious difficulty, but that he did so in an effort to secure the beginning of his Logic against sceptical objection. As such, it powerfully demonstrates the relevance of Pyrrhonian scepticism to Hegel’s philosophical project. Other scholars, including notably Kenneth Westphal, Michael Forster, Klaus Vieweg and Ioannis Trisokkas, have made valuable contributions to this topic. Dunphy’s study, however, is the first book-length treatment of the topic to focus specifically on the way that Pyrrhonism influences Hegel’s approach to the problem of beginning in his Logic and the first to argue that Hegel’s engagement with Pyrrhonism is crucial for understanding the scientific status of that work. (shrink)

In this article, we offer a précis of Appearance & Explanation: Phenomenal Explanationism in Epistemology. We explain the central features of our theory of epistemic justification, Phenomenal Explanationism (PE). Further, we describe how PE applies to justification of various kinds and how it solves problems that plague its closest rival, Phenomenal Conservatism (PC).

This chapter contains section titled: Descarteś Project in the Meditations The Introduction of the Doubt Initial Results and the Truth Rule Circularity and Begging the Question Descarteś Aims and the Circle Certainty, Not Truth Limit the Doubt Remove the Doubt Presumption in Favor of the Intellect Strong Validation Lessons of the Circle.

The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science, 1945 to 2000 offers the reader a guide to the major philosophical approaches to science since World War Two. Considering the bases, arguments and conclusions of the four main movements - Naturalism, Descriptivism, Foundationalism, and Logical Reconstructionism - John P. Losee explores how philosophy has both shaped and expanded our understanding of science. The volume features major figures of twentieth century science, and engages with the work of previous philosophers of science, including Norman (...) Campbell, Ernest Nagel, Rudolf Carnap, Karl Popper, Richard Dawkins, and John Worrall. In particular, The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science, 1945 to 2000 aims to answer the following questions: should philosophy of science be a prescriptive discipline? Can philosophy of science achieve normative status without designating evaluative principles? How should competing philosophies of science be balanced? And finally, how can understanding the history of science aid us in analyzing the philosophy of science? In answering these questions, this book shows us why we understand science the way we do. The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science 1945 to 2000 is essential reading for students and researchers working in the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

In everyday life, people think of skepticism as the position of a stubborn person who rejects what other people believe in. Some skeptics may deny that climate change is real, while others claim that the first moon landing did not take place. Contemporary philosophers think of skepticism in a different way. In their view, skepticism is the conclusion of a paradoxical argument about epistemic statuses like knowledge and reasons. A paradoxical argument is a logically valid argument that, starting from seemingly (...) plausible premises, reaches an absurd conclusion. There are two major skeptical arguments. The regress argument purports to show that people lack reasons to believe any claim whatsoever because the search for those reasons inevitably leads to an infinite regress. The underdetermination argument seeks to prove that people lack reasons to believe that there are things such as chairs, trees, other people, and so on. It supports that conclusion by citing skeptical hypotheses, including the idea that people might be dreaming or the suggestion that people could be brains in a vat connected to a supercomputer that mimics the pattern of neural activity that would be produced if they were perceiving external objects. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to develop a view that I call “Evidential Knowledge First”. To do so, first, I consider a traditional way of developing evidentialism, which I call Traditional Evidentialism, and argue that, while it vindicates the roles we expect evidence to play, it struggles accounting for cases of non-inferential justification and non-inferential knowledge (§2-3). I then consider a view we might call “Technically Evidentialism”, which we get when we jointly take two core claims of knowledge-first (...) epistemology, e.g., E=K and J=K. These claims jointly entail the evidentialist idea that justification supervenes on evidence, while avoiding the problem faced by Traditional Evidentialism. However, and contra Traditional Evidentialism, the resulting view doesn’t account for the roles evidence plays in justifying our beliefs (§4). This brings us to Evidential Knowledge-First, which develops traditional evidentialism against the background of knowledge-first epistemology in a way that retains the best features of both views (§5). Evidential Knowledge-First provides us with a novel two-tiered account of knowledge. As we will see, a core feature of my view is that it entails that cases of non-inferential knowledge are cases of knowledge without justification. I argue that this is a benefit of the view (§6). (shrink)

In this paper, I give a brief overview of ideas from Reformed Epistemology, and the relationship between faith, evidence, and belief. I discuss what makes belief in God rationally warranted, and how reformed epistemology strikes a middle ground between fideism and evidentialism. In effect, reformed epistemology avoids the fideist idea that belief in God must be taken on "blind faith," but also avoids some of the epistemic issues present in evidentialism, such as its self-referential incoherence. The reformed epistemologist says belief (...) in God is rational, but not for the reasons demanded by evidentialists. (shrink)

Foundationalism, a theory about the structure of epistemic justification, is often criticized for excesses that are unnecessary additions to it. But when correctly understood, its main tenets (featuring most prominently the claim that there can be properly basic beliefs) are virtually undeniable. The best way to get at the heart of foundationalism is to focus not on Descartes but on Aristotle and his famous regress argument. Section I unpacks that foundationalist argument. Section II addresses some objections to foundationalism. Section III (...) considers how foundationalism bears on topics in the epistemology of theology—topics such as Reformed epistemology, natural theology, Biblical criticism, and post-foundationalism. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga, analitik felsefe düşüncesi içerisinde yetişmiş ve bu gelenek içinde teistik din felsefesinin oluşumuna katkıda bulunmuş bir filozoftur. Ayrıca teizmin savunusu için yaptığı çalışmalarla, çeşitli üniversitelerden aldığı onur ödülleri ve 2017 yılında kazandığı Templeton Prize ödülüyle, haklı bir üne kavuşmuş bir şahsiyettir. Bu çalışmayı yapmamızdaki en önemli amaç, Plantinga’nın dini epistemoloji üzerine yaptığı çalışmaları analiz edip bu düşüncelerinin ardalanına dair bir tespitte bulunmaktır. Bu çalışmada yararlandığımız öncelikli kaynaklar, Plantinga’nın Nicholas Wolterstorff ile birlikte kaleme aldığı “Faith and Rationality” adlı eser (...) ile birlikte son dönem epistemik fikirlerinin çerçevesini belirleyen üç ciltlik “Warrant and Proper Function”, “Warrant: The Current Debate”, “Warranted: Christian Belief” isimli eserler olmuştur. Plantinga’nın ilk dönem epistemoloji çalışmalarının gayesini bir tür olumsuzlama diyebileceğimiz klasik temelciliğin ve evidentializmin eleştirisi oluştururken, ikinci döneminde bu eleştirilerden yola çıkarak Tanrı inancının haklı bir temelde ve güvenceye sahip olduğunu gösterme amacına yönelmiştir. Plantinga’nın teolojik fikirlerini oluşturan Kalvinci ekol, onun dini epistemolojisinin de özünü oluşturmaktadır. Plantinga’nın dini epistemolojisini iki boyutlu olarak değerlendirdiğimizde, içe dönük olarak Hristiyan inancıyla ilgilense de çalışmalarının dışsal yönünü daha genel olarak teizmin Tanrı’sı ve onun rasyonelliği oluşturmaktadır. Açıkçası Plantinga’nın epistemolojik külliyatı bir tür kavram zenginliğini de beraberinde getirmektedir. Çalışmamız içerisinde ele aldığımız kadarıyla uygun işlevsellik, tasarım planı, güvence (warrant) gibi kavramlar onun Tanrı inancının epistemik mahiyetini ortaya koymak için ne derece kararlı olduğunu göstermektedir. Netice itibariyle Tanrı inancının ve onun bilgisinin rasyonel olabileceğini ifade eden Plantinga, her ne kadar Hristiyan inancının belli bir koluna mensup olsa da diğer mezhepleri dışlamaz. Ayrıca Plantinga, birçok çalışmasında belirttiği üzere projesinin Yahudilik, İslam gibi diğer teistik dinlere yönelik olduğunu da belirtmektedir. (shrink)

Robust metanormative realists think that there are irreducibly normative, metaphysically heavy normative facts. One might wonder how we could be epistemically justified in believing that such facts exist. In this paper, I offer an answer to this question: one’s belief in the existence of robustly real normative facts is epistemically justified because so believing is indispensable to being a successful inquirer for creatures like us. The argument builds on Enoch's (2007, 2011) deliberative indispensability argument for Robust Realism but avoids relying (...) on an overly pragmatic account of the sources of basic epistemic justification. Instead, I suggest that the sources of basic epistemic justification are those belief-forming methods which are indispensable for zetetically indispensable projects, that is, projects which are constitutive of being a successful inquirer for embodied, agential creatures like ourselves. (shrink)

Psychological research has discovered that episodic memories are constructive in nature. This paper examines how, despite being constructive, episodic memories can provide us with justification for beliefs about the past. In current literature, two major approaches to memorial justification are internalist foundationalism and reliabilism. I first demonstrate that an influential version of internalist foundationalism, dogmatism, encounters problems when we compare certain types of memory construction with cognitive penetration in perception. On the other hand, various versions of reliabilism all face skeptical (...) challenges. I propose an alternative, two-factor theory that recognizes an epistemic distinction typically overlooked by dogmatism and reliabilism. Although our account leaves certain aspects unspecified, it is an important step forward. (shrink)

Brandom’s reading of Hegel’s metaphysics offers an excitingly rich interpretation within the context of contemporary modal metaphysics. Brandom reads Hegel’s determinate negation in the way that the concepts of material incompatibility and material consequence relations operate. Brandom recognizes incompatibility as a modal concept and places it as a primitive in the foundation of Hegel’s metaphysics. This paper examines of Brandom’s modal foundationalist claim in comparison to how Hegel conceives of modality in his Logic. Upon this examination, the paper suggests that (...) Brandom’s interpretation remains problematically indifferent to the anti-foundationalist aspect of Hegel’s Logic and Hegel’s understanding of modality. (shrink)

Social ontology studies the nature and properties of social reality while social metaontology examines the relationship between ontology and the social sciences, which is often treated as a normative question. However, social sciences themselves contain ontological theses, raising the descriptive question of how these internal ontologies relate to the rest of the social sciences. This paper argues that important parts of sociology have an anti-foundationalist metaontology. This descriptive claim is used to build a normative argument against foundationalism and is supported (...) by examining the works of Durkheim and Weber and how their metaontological beliefs continue to influence many sociologists. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ “myth of the given” had a momentous influence on 20th-century epistemology, putting under pressure the internalist foundationalism so prominent in early analytic philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the core themes in Sellars’ argument are anticipated in the work of the London philosopher and psychologist Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948). Indeed, in some respects Edgell’s argument against the myth of the given is even more compelling than Sellars’. The paper logically reconstructs and historically contextualizes Edgell’s line of argument, as (...) emerging out of a critique of Russell’s epistemology, with the goal of showing that the “myth of the given” effectively predated Sellars by four decades. (shrink)

Here I will develop a naturalistic account of epistemic reflection and its significance for epistemology. I will first argue that thought, as opposed to mere information processing, requires a capacity for cognitive self-regulation. After discussing the basic capacities necessary for cognitive self-regulation of any kind, I will consider qualitatively different kinds of thought that can emerge when the basic capacities enable the creature to interiorize a form of social cooperation. First, I will discuss second-personal cooperation and the kind of thought (...) that emerges from its interiorization. Then, I will discuss third-personal cooperation and the kind of thought that emerges from its interiorization. We will see that epistemic reflection is the interiorized version of interpersonal argumentation, which is the epistemic component of third-personal cooperation. In developing this account, I will draw heavily on the work of Michael Tomasello and other cognitive scientists advocating the “social intentionality hypothesis”. However, I will show how work done in the defeasible reasoning tradition can provide us with a deeper explanation of some claims made by advocates of the social intentionality hypothesis. Additionally, we will see that work done on social intentionality can help us better understand the significance of knowledge and justification as understood by the defeasible reasoning tradition. We will see that the social intentionality hypothesis and the defeasible reasoning tradition are mutually illuminating. By drawing equally on both, I will provide a novel account of the foundations of knowledge. (shrink)

Our worldview assumes that people are morally responsible. Consider our emotions regarding other people or ourselves. We often feel anger, gratitude, pride, and shame toward them or ourselves. Consider religious beliefs. Jews and Christians believe that God cares whether a person does right by others and freely loves him. Consider moral values. We value dignity, freedom, and rights. The above emotions, beliefs, and values assume that people are responsible. In particular, they assume that a person is responsible for what she (...) thinks and does, and that this is a good thing. This book argues that the above worldview is false. No one is responsible. -/- I provide four arguments for this conclusion. -/- (1) Foundation. No one is responsible because there is no foundation for responsibility. A foundation for responsibility is something for which a person is responsible but not by being responsible for something else. -/- (2) Epistemic Condition. No one is responsible because no one fulfills the epistemic condition necessary for blameworthiness. -/- (3) Internalism. If a person were responsible, then she would be responsible for, and only for, what goes on in her head. Most of the evidence for responsibility says the opposite. -/- (4) Amount. No one is responsible because we cannot make sense of what makes a person more or less praiseworthy (or blameworthy). -/- The above arguments cohere with each other, explain the responsibility-skepticism literature, and have disturbing implications. (shrink)

This commentary considers Audi’s treatment of four fundamental topics in the epistemology of perception: inference, the basing relation, the metaphysics of reasons and grounds, and the relationship between knowledge and justification.

Our awareness of the boundedness of the spatial sensory field—a paradigmatic structural feature of visual experience—possesses a distinctive epistemic role. Properly understood, this result undermines a widely assumed picture of how visual experience permits us to learn about the world. This paper defends an alternative picture in which visual experience provides at least two kinds of non-inferential justification for beliefs about the external world. Accommodating this justification in turn requires recognising a new way for visual experience to encode information about (...) the world. Reflection upon the epistemic contribution of sensory experience's structural features thus forces us to revise our understanding of how perception, cognition, and the world fit together. (shrink)

Standard views about metaphysical structure presume that if metaphysical structure is hierarchical, any priority ordering of individuals is rigid or situationally invariant. This paper challenges this presumption. The challenge derives from an effort to interpret the kind of metaphysical structure implicit in writings central to the Huayan tradition of Chinese Buddhism. The Huayan tradition views reality as a realm of thoroughgoing interdependence. Close attention to primary sources indicates that this view does not fit comfortably in any of the metaphysical structures (...) familiar from contemporary analytic metaphysics. Accordingly, this paper also develops a conception of metaphysical structure that rejects the standard presumption. Motivation for this conception derives from attending to certain formal analogies between kinds of metaphysical structure and kinds of social organization. These analogies provide guidance for a conception of metaphysical structure as heterarchical or situationally variable. This conception breaks new ground for analytic metaphysics and opens conceptual space for interpreting Huayan metaphysics as a heterarchical variation of foundationalism. (shrink)

A prominent view on personal identity over time, Jeff McMahan’s ‘Embodied Mind Account’ (2002) holds that we cease to exist only once our brains can no longer sustain the basic capacity to uphold consciousness. One of the many implications of this view on identity persistence is that we continue to exist throughout even the most severe cases of dementia, until our consciousness irreversibly shuts down. In this paper, I argue that, while the most convincing of prominent accounts of personal identity (...) over time, McMahan’s account faces serious challenges in explanatory power of dementias and related neurodegenerative conditions. Particularly, this becomes visible in the face of emerging methods for neural tissue regeneration, and the possibility of ‘re-emerging patients’. I argue that medical professionals’ neglecting qualitative aspects of identity risks resulting in grave misunderstandings in decision-making processes, and ethically objectionable outcomes in future practices. Finally, I propose revisions which could potentially salvage the great benefits that Embodied Mind Theory still can bring to the field of dementia care in terms of understanding life, death, and identity across the lifespan. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize (...) a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda­ tions will be given special attention. (shrink)

This book addresses the breach within contemporary philosophy with a newly conceived foundationalism. It shows that dramatic discord has arisen between its two dominant branches. The Anglo-American branch generally takes its departure from logic and from natural science, while the Continental branch generally takes its departure from art and from the great traditional questions. However, they share this common negative feature: each side denies the view that philosophy issues from a central foundation. The book gives brief distillations of six major (...) Anglo-American figures: Carnap, James, Quine, Davidson and Kripke; as well as six major Continental figures: Husserl (the only foundationalist), Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Gadamer, and Sallis. In each, the author discovers a hidden foundation called ruling image that animates the philosopher's thought. (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)

Phenomenal Conservatism is an approach to epistemological justification that, based on "appearances" and "seemings" and in line with the theory of common sense epistemology, attempt to set up an internal and non-inferential justification, at least for some kind of beliefs. According to this view, justification and non-justification have a direct relationship with the mental state of the agent. Based on this assumption that “Things are as they seem”, phenomenal conservatism offers its central idea that if, for an agent, something seems (...) to be true -and there is no defeater for that until doubting in - that agent thereby has at least some justification for believing that. In this article, we will interpret this new approach with an empathetic attitude and, in addition to explaining its main components, we will effort to answer the most important objections of phenomenal conservatism and show that this view is a significant approach to the justification and rationality of human beliefs. (shrink)

Despite wholeheartedly endorsing Lycan's commonsensism on display in On Evidence in Philosophy, this paper raises concerns about three views Lycan defends in that book. The first view is compatibilism about free will and determinism. The paper argues that Lycan's Moorean defense of compatibilism fails and that it is plausible for commonsensists to think that, in their dispute with incompatibilists, the burden of proof is on compatibilists. The second view is Lycan's Principle of Humility, offered as an account of the conditions (...) under which recognized disagreement undermines knowledge. The paper considers a permissive and a demanding way of understanding his Principle of Humility and suggests that, contra Lycan, commonsensism fits better with a permissive understanding. The third view discussed is his coherentism about justification. The paper concludes that commonsensism is best understood in foundationalist terms and that Lycan's coherentism is, in fact, an inadequately motivated version of foundationalism. (shrink)

Many have taken Sellars’s critique of empiricism in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (EPM) to be aimed at his teacher C. I. Lewis. But if so, why do the famous arguments of its opening sections carry so little force against Lewis’s views? Understandably, some respond by denying that Lewis’s epistemology is among the positions targeted by Sellars. But this is incorrect. Indeed, Sellars had earlier offered more trenchant (if already familiar) critiques of Lewis’s epistemology. What is original about EPM (...) is that it criticizes empiricist positions like Lewis’s not because of their foundationalism, but because of their psychologism about meaning. Since psychologism turns out to be unacceptable by Lewis’s own lights, EPM has a compelling (if implicit) critique of Lewis to offer after all, one that strikes at the heart of his philosophical system. (shrink)

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired (...) by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief. (shrink)

Книгата е посветена на проблема за обосноваността от класическата интерналистка гледна точка на епистемологията. Тя преразглежда традиционните проблеми в интерналистката рамка в по-широкия контекст на развитието в тази област през последните петдесет години.Централните проблеми в изследването се отнасят до условията на обосноваността като резултат от епистемичната оценка на вярванията с помощта на свидетелства и основания. Сред тях са проблемът за характера на свидетелствата и мястото им в процедурата на епистемична оценка, проблемите за добрите и достатъчни основания и проблемът за регреса (...) на основанията. (shrink)