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22 results

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Foundationalism

Foundationalism
  • Richard Fumerton
  • Published online:
    30 June 2022
    Print publication:
    28 July 2022
  • Foundationalism is a view about the structure of knowledge and justification. The heart of the thesis is the claim that if there is any knowledge or justified belief at all, then there is a kind of knowledge and justified belief that does not require inference from something else known or justifiably believed. This Element begins by exploring abstract arguments for foundationalism and against proposed alternatives. It then explores disagreements among foundationalists about how to understand foundational knowledge and justified belief, what is plausibly included in the foundations, and what is required for legitimate inference from foundations to the rest of what we believe. The author argues for the conclusion that one can combine insights captured by different versions of foundationalism by making a distinction between ideal justification and justification that falls short of that ideal.

  • Recognizing Levels of Justification: To Add or to Subtract

  • Richard Fumerton
  • Journal:
    Episteme / Volume 16 / Issue 4 / December 2019
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2019, pp. 385-394

  • In this paper I explore the idea of developing something like Sosa's influential distinction between cognitio and scientia (animal knowledge and reflective knowledge) to epistemic justification. On the assumption that we should, I explore the question of whether we should do so by either (1) beginning with a really basic, intellectually undemanding kind of justification, recognizing more sophisticated intellectually rewarding justification by layering more demanding requirements on that basic sort, or (2) beginning with an ideal sort of justification and recognizing less demanding sorts of justification by stripping away conditions from that ideal justification.

  • WHAT THE INTERNALIST SHOULD SAY TO THE TORTOISE

  • Richard Fumerton
  • Journal:
    Episteme / Volume 12 / Issue 2 / June 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 April 2015, pp. 209-217

  • Carroll's (1895) short piece “What the Tortoise said to Achilles” in many ways anticipates issues that arise in a number of contemporary controversies. One might argue, for example, that initially plausible attempts to deal with the problem of easy knowledge will land one in the unfortunate position of Achilles who followed the Tortoise down a road that leads to vicious infinite regress. Or consider the conditions required for inferential justification. For idealized inferential justification, I have defended (1995, 2004, 2006) the view that to be justified in believing P on the basis of E one needs to be not only justified in believing E, but justified in believing that E makes probable P (where entailment is the upper limit of making probable). And again, critics have argued that such a strong requirement fails to learn the lesson that Achilles should have been taught by the Tortoise. Even more generally, one might well argue that strong access internalists will need to deal with a variation of Carroll's puzzle even for their accounts of non-inferential justification. In this paper I'll examine these controversies with a mind to reaching a conclusion about just exactly how one can accept intellectually demanding conditions on justified belief without encountering vicious regress.

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