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Bonjour's Objection to Traditional Foundationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
Empirical foundationalism affirms that some empirical beliefs a person holds (at a time) have a degree of justification or warrant that does not derive from their being inferable from other empirical beliefs the person holds. Such beliefs are basic for the person (at the time). In his recent book Laurence Bonjour claims that foundationalism faces the following problem:
The basic problem confronting empirical foundationalism … is how the basic or foundational empirical beliefs to which it appeals are themselves justified or warranted or in some way given positive epistemic standing, while still preserving their status as basic. This problem amounts to a dilemma: if there is no justification, basic beliefs are rendered epistemically arbitrary, thereby fatally impugning the very claim of foundationalism to constitute a theory of epistemic justification; while a justification which appeals to further premises of some sort threatens to begin anew the regress of justification which it is the whole point of foundationalism to avoid.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , Summer 1989 , pp. 433 - 448
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1989
References
1 Bonjour, Laurence, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 58Google Scholar. Hereafter I will abbreviate the title of Bonjour's book as “SEK”.
2 Ibid., 34–35. Generally speaking, externalists hold that a person may be unaware of the justificatory conditions of any justified belief of his, while internalists require that a person be aware of the justificatory conditions of any beliefs of his which are warranted. Externalism in Bonjour's sense is externalism in the general sense just described applied to basic beliefs alone.
3 Ibid., 59.
4 Ibid., 60.
5 I am not quoting Bonjour. My presentation of the objection is based on Bonjour's criticism of the views of Quinton and C. I. Lewis. See SEK, 65–79.Google Scholar
6 Russell, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 139Google Scholar. Intuitive beliefs for Russell are ones that have some degree of credibility which they do not owe to being inferable from other beliefs of the person in question.
8 Sometimes Russell appears to treat “self-evident” as a term of epistemic appraisal. But the central tendency in his usage of the term is to apply it to beliefs in virtue of the degree of subjective confidence the believer reposes in what is believed. See especially Ibid., 138.
9 Ibid., 136.
10 Ibid., 46.
11 This is Russell's position. He says (Ibid., 138), “The second sort of self-evidence will be that which belongs to judgments in the first instance, and is not derived from direct perception of a fact as a single complex whole”. For Russell an intuitive belief with less than the highest degree of self-evidence still owes its credibility to being self-evident. But its credibility is not due to the believer being acquainted with, being directly aware of, a fact which makes the belief true. Thus, Russell's position does not really fit into Bonjour's classification of foundationalists as either externalists or adherents of the myth of the empirically given.
12 Condition (1) is suggested by the account of acquaintance quoted above. Textual evidence that condition (2) is Russell's is found in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description”, in Mysticism and Logic (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), 156–157.Google Scholar
13 The red expanse may well be the tomato, or at least its facing surface. I am definitely not assuming here that private or mental entities characterized by perceptible qualities intervene between us and the physical objects we perceive.
14 Bonjour says, “Thus Quinton must apparently say instead that the intuition or direct awareness is not in any way a cognitive or judgmental state, that it involves nothing like the propositional thesis or assertion that there is a red book on the desk—or indeed any other thesis or assertion, which would be just as much in need of justification.” See SEK, 68Google Scholar. This passage suggests to me that by saying a psychological state is noncognitive, Bonjour means that it lacks propositional content. At other times Bonjour's use of “noncognitive” seems more naturally construed as equivalent to “non-belief entailing”. See for example Ibid., 76–77.
15 The term “prement patch” is Price's. See Price, H. H., Perception (London: Methuen, 1954), 3Google Scholar. A prement patch is an expanse or extent over which pressure is or might be felt.
16 Wright, Edmond, “Recent Work in Perception”, American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), 25.Google Scholar
17 See Lewis, C. I., An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1946), 53–54Google Scholar; also Chisholm, R., Person and Object (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1979), 114–115.Google Scholar
18 Also, I do not have a general criterion for the individuation of concrete states of affairs. Donald Davidson discusses the individuation of events as concrete in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, Essay 8. Davidson's events as particulars (concrete) are states of affairs in the broad sense of this term used here. So his discussion of the individuation of events is germane to the individuation of states of affairs as concrete.
19 Ibid., 134.
20 Ibid., 135.
21 Davidson thinks it is possible to give a Tarski style definition of truth for a natural language like English. See Davidson, Donald, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 55–60.Google Scholar
22 It is worth noting that (PF) does not carry a commitment to saying that if an organism is directly aware of a state of affairs that verifies P, then the organism believes that P. (PF) only implies that if the organism believes that P, the belief is justified.
23 The point here relies on the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. See Moser, Paul, Empirkal Justification (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1985). 3Google Scholar. The point is also made in general terms by Pollock, John, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), 36–37.Google Scholar
24 It would be unwise for the objector to conclude that I would be justified in believing that G, i.e., that G is doxastically justified for me. The objector would then be in the position of having to explain how I could believe that G on the basis of my direct awareness of S1, while knowing nothing of Gorbachev's taste in colours. But the objector can conclude (5), which simply says G is propositionally justified for me. (PF), in the situation the objector envisages, does seem to carry a commitment to (5).
25 Bonjour, , SEK, 68.Google Scholar
26 Bonjour explicitly affirms (B2) in Ibid., 8.
27 But (B2) has been criticized. William Alston does so in “What's Wrong with Immediate Knowledge”, Synthese 55 (1983), 87–91.Google Scholar
28 Swain, Marshall, Reasons and Knowledge (London and Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 75.Google Scholar
29 It would be more accurate to say a good reason is a reason which justifies the belief as long as nothing else undermines or defeats the claim that the person is justified in adopting the belief.
30 Bonjour, , SEK, 5–8.Google Scholar
31 (PF) does not constitute a form of externalism because it allows that the justification for basic beliefs can consist of good causal reasons. Externalism holds that what warrants a basic belief may lie outside anything of which the believer is aware. But (PF) makes the source of the warrant for basic beliefs states of affairs of which the believers are directly aware. That these direct awarenesses are causal reasons for basic beliefs according to (PF), does not put the justificatory conditions for such beliefs outside the consciousness of the believers.