Foundationalism
Overview
Foundationalism is the view in epistemology that justified beliefs form a structure resting on a set of basic beliefs which are justified without being inferred from anything else, in the way a building rests on foundations. Candidates for basic beliefs have included the cogito, immediate reports of sense experience, and self-evident truths of logic. Its rivals are coherentism (beliefs are justified by mutual support, with no foundations) and infinitism (the chain of justification may go on without end).
Notes
- Foundationalism is the third horn of the Münchhausen trilemma: the chain of justification stops at something accepted without further justification. The trilemma's challenge is that the stopping point looks like dogmatism; the foundationalist's reply is that some beliefs can be justified directly, by experience or self-evidence, without argument.
- I take the foundationalist horn, and I take it explicitly. My Presuppositions are my basic beliefs. I do not claim they are self-evident or indubitable; I claim they are rationally motivated, because they make reasoning possible and produce models that predict the world. This is a modest foundationalism that is compatible with Fallibilism, since the foundations are held provisionally too.
- The presuppositionalist (Transcendental Argument) is also a foundationalist, with the Christian God as the one basic belief. The difference is not in the structure but in the honesty with which the foundation is declared.