foundationalism

   The epistemological theory that noetic (belief) structures include two types of justified belief: (1) properly basic beliefs, which confer epistemic justification on other beliefs, but do not require it themselves, and (2) properly non-basic beliefs, which derive their epistemic justification from an appropriate doxastic/discursive relation to properly basic beliefs (for example, deduction). As such, foundationalism is an affirmation that the chain of epistemic justification must be finite (pace infinitism) and that some beliefs are not justified by other beliefs (pace coherentism). In popular parlance 'foundationalism' is often used to refer to one historically influential and particularly contentious subset of foundationalist theories derived from Descartes and Locke. This theory, more properly called 'classical' or 'strong' foundationalism, demands that all properly basic beliefs be self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible. While classical foundationalism has long been taken (though not by Descartes and Locke) to deny rationality to religious beliefs, consistent application of its overly rigorous criteria would also undermine the rationality of most other putative sources of basic belief including memory and testimony. Classical foundationalism has been dogged by the problem of self-referential defeat since the proposition that 'all justified beliefs are self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible or derived from beliefs that are' does not itself meet these criteria: hence, if classical foundationalism is true, we are not justified in believing it. Some philosophers (for example, Richard Rorty) take the failure of classical foundationalism as warrant to reject all forms of foundationalism. In contrast, many others (for example, Alvin Goldman, Ernest Sosa and Alvin Plantinga) have in recent years developed modest forms of foundationalism that retain the distinction between properly basic and non-basic beliefs, while broadening the criteria for proper basicality to something more closely approximating our common-sense intuitions.

   See epistemology; epistemology, Reformed; epistemology, religious; justification, epistemic; reason

   Further reading: Audi 2003; DePaul 2001; Rockmore 2004