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Foundationalism in Epistemology





At Yahoo!Answers I recently encountered the following question:

I'm having trouble understanding Foundationalism and Coherentism?

If I wanted to say that truth or knowledge lays in "objective facts"... for the most part.
Would I class this as foundationalism - I suppose by saying that facts = foundation?
Or, could I say that objective facts make sense and are consistent and cohesive with each other and us.. therefore... coherentism makes sense...?

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around these concepts.
Any help is appreciated.

As regular readers of this blog know, I sometimes mine my answers from that site here simply to economize on anything that seems like work. I'm lazy, a bit like the fellow portrayed above.

So I will proceed with the copy-and-paste. To the above I replied as follows....

You might begin by distinguishing between theories of truth on the one hand and theories of knowledge on the other. Both are parts of the broader inquiry known as epistemology, but they aren't the same as one another.

You seem to have in mind a CORRESPONDENCE theory of truth, that truth consists in the correspondence of a subjective belief or idea with objective facts. This is a venerable theory, but adhering to that doesn't really address the foundationalism question.

We get to that if we ask: what is knowledge? On one very widespread and venerable definition, knowledge is JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF.

Assume you know what a "belief" is, and are happy to stick with it as per this definition as the bearer of truth. (That is controversial, but everything is controversial in philosophy. Let's ignore that bit.) The noun "belief" has two adjectives in the above definition: justified and true.

We don't necessarily consider a state of mind an instance of KNOWLEDGE just because a belief is true. It could be true by accident. I could believe that Niagara Falls lies on an international boundary, because I am under the false impression it is to be found on the northern boundary of Washington State. As it happens, my belief "Niagara Falls lies on an international boundary" is true. It is in conformity with objective facts concerning the geography of western New York and Canada. But my justification for that belief is all wrong, so we wouldn't ordinarily say that I knew where the Falls actually lies!

So: how do we know the truths that we know? What is the source of this element of justification? THAT is the question where foundationalists and coherentists differ, and they can both adopt the correspondence theory of truth that you've adopted.

The real problem that they both address is what is known as the "epistemic regress." Suppose we adopt the view that I am justified in believing A if and only if I believe other things (one of which we will call B) and that these other things prove or logically imply A. So, what justifies me in believing B? C? you can see the prospect for infinite regression here.

Foundationalism looks for some rock bottom belief that doesn't require anything beneath it, in order to rest everything on that. Something like Descartes' discovery that "I think" would work as a foundation. Something infallible and incorrigible must serve as the turtle on the bottom of the pile of turtles, to use a common expression for it.

But coherentists such a Laurence BonJour say there is no need for a pillar of turtles. Our beliefs justify each other, and the fact that if we keep asking for their basis often enough we will eventually go around in a circle does not refute them. Just so long as the circle is wide enough to give us space to live.

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