Three Arguments Against Foundationalism: Arbitrariness, Epistemic Regress, and Existential Support

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Howard-Snyder ◽  
E.J. Coffman
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Peter Klein ◽  
Basic Beliefs

A particular belief of a person is basic just in case it is epistemically justified and it owes its justification to something other than her other beliefs or the interrelations of their contents; a person's belief is nonbasic just in case it is epistemically justified but not basic. Traditional Foundationalism says that, first, if a human being has a nonbasic belief, then, at bottom, it owes its justification to at least one basic belief, and second, there are basic beliefs. Call the second thesis Minimal Foundationalism. In this essay, we assess three arguments against Minimal Foundationalism which we find in recent work of Peter Klein and Ernest Sosa.

Mystical Experience and Non–Basically Justified Belief

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Warrant ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Basic Beliefs

Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or epistemic warrant for these beliefs is not derived from other justified beliefs through inductive evidential support or deductive methods of inference. These ‘basic beliefs’ constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. One can give a reason for the justification of a basic belief even though the justification for that belief is not based on other beliefs. Thus, according to Chisholm, if asked what one's justification was for thinking that one knew, presently, that one is thinking about a city one takes to be Albuquerque, one could simply say ‘what justifies me…is simply the fact that I am thinking about a city I take to be Albuquerque’.

The Crucial Disanalogies Between Properly Basic Belief and Belief in God

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
Basic Beliefs

The antifoundationalist defence of belief in God set forth by Alvin Plantinga has been widely discussed in recent years. Classical foundationalism assumes that there are two kinds of beliefs that we are justified in holding: beliefs supported by evidence, and basic beliefs. Our basic beliefs are those bedrock beliefs that need no evidence to support them and upon which our other beliefs must rest. For the foundationalist, the only beliefs that can be properly basic are either self-evident, or incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Belief in God is none of these. Thus, says the foundationalist, belief in God is justified only if there is sufficient evidence to back it up.

Decolonization as Existential Paradox

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-121
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Human Being

This article offers a critical analysis of Euromodernity through an engagement with the Africana existentialism of Lewis R. Gordon. Drawing on Gordon’s recent work Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) as well as Frantz Fanon, the author argues for the need to decolonize modernity by decoupling Europe and reason, freedom, knowledge, and power. Understanding what it means to be a human being involves an ongoing commitment understanding its relationship to the larger structures of reality, including social reality.

Problems of Metaphilosophy – a View from Aside

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Alexander L. Nikiforov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Subjective Opinion ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Basic Beliefs

The paper discusses several problems of metaphilosophy that were explored in the philosophical literature in Russia. Metaphilosophy tries to understand what is philosophy, what problems philosophers are dealing with, which methods they employ in their investigations, the nature of philosophical statements and so on. Philosophers in Russia tended to think of philosophy as a special type of worldview that exists together with the ordinary worldview and religious worldview. The author defines worldview as a collection of basic beliefs about the surrounding world, society, human being, the relations existing between individuals and society, about values and ideals. It is underscored that a worldview is always somebody’s worldview (it belongs either to an individual or a social group). The worldview problems explored by philosophers remain the same throughout thousands of years; what changes is how they are stated in different times. Every human being faces these problems if she has realized herself as an autonomous being and the reality splits for her into the I and the non-I. All philosophical problems revolve around three basic questions: what is the non-I (i.e. nature and society)? - this is the ontological question; what is I? (the anthropological question); what relations exist between the I and the non-I (the epistemological, axiological, ethical and other questions). The author also explores several stages of a philosophical investigation: an internal dissatisfaction with existing solutions, a search for a new perspective (meaning, idea, interpretation), development of the found solution. The author points at a number of characteristics that make philosophy different from science: philosophical statements and conceptions cannot be verified or refuted by experience, they are not universal. It is argued that the notion of truth in its classical interpretation cannot be applied to philosophical statements because the latter cannot be true or false. The author concludes that philosophical statements or conceptions express the subjective opinion of a given philosopher about the world and the human being. An obvious evidence for this is the existing pluralism of philosophical systems, schools, and trends.

Holes of Oblivion: The Banality of Radical Evil

Hypatia ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peg Birmingham
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
Modem Human

This essay offers a reflection on Arendt's notion of radical evil, arguing that her later understanding of the banality of evil is already at work in her earlier reflections on the nature of radical evil as banal, and furthermore, that Arendt's understanding of the “banality of radical evil” has its source in the very event that offers a possible remedy to it, namely, the event of natality. Kristeva's recent work (2001) on Arendt is important to this proposal insofar as her notion of “abjection” illuminates Arendt's claim that understanding the superfluousness of the modem human being is inseparable from grasping the emergence of radical evil. In the final part of the essay, I argue that Arendt's “politics of natality” emerges from out of these two inseparable moments of the event of natality, offering the only possible remedy to the threat of radical evil by modifying our relationship to temporality.

Basic beliefs and Christian faith

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGORY W. DAWES
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Basic Beliefs ◽  
Christian Beliefs

AbstractIn rejecting Plantinga's ‘reformed epistemology’, Jeremy Koons has argued that no beliefs are epistemically basic, since even perceptual beliefs arise from observations that are theory-dependent. But even if all observations are theory-dependent, not all theories are alike. Beliefs that are dependent on uncontroversial bodies of theory may be ‘basic’ in the sense that they play a foundational role in the acquisition of knowledge. There is, however, another problem with reformed epistemology. It is that even if Christian beliefs were basic in this sense, they could face evidential challenge, for the epistemic status of a ‘basic’ belief depends, in part, on its probabilistic or explanatory relations to our other beliefs. It follows that Christian faith remains vulnerable to evidential arguments, such as Paul Draper's argument from evil.

scholarly journals Swinburne and Plantinga on internal rationality

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-358
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE
Keyword(s):  
Posterior Probability ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Basic Beliefs ◽  
Public Evidence ◽  
Internal Rationality

Plantinga defines S's belief as ‘privately rational if and only if it is probable on S's evidence’, and ‘publicly rational if and only if it is probable with respect to public evidence’, and he claims that ‘it is an immediate consequence of these definitions that all my basic beliefs are privately rational’. I made it explicitly clear in my review that on my account of a person's evidence (quoted and used by Plantinga) as ‘the content of his basic beliefs (weighted by his degree of confidence in them)’, that is not the case. I emphasize ‘weighted by his degree of confidence in them’. I wrote explicitly: ‘for more or less any belief, however convinced you are of it initially, other evidence of which you are equally convinced could rend it overall improbable’. Put technically, in probabilistic terms, basic beliefs come to us with different degrees of prior probability varying with our degree of confidence in them, but a belief with a high prior probability can in the light of other beliefs of our current set have a lower posterior probability. If you continue to hold on to a basic belief when its probability on the total evidence is below half, that belief is not privately rational.

PROPERLY BASIC THEISTIC BELIEF: A SESAME STREET OBJECTION

Think ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (47) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Ken Nickel
Keyword(s):  
Sesame Street ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Theistic Belief ◽  
Basic Beliefs

Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga wants everyone to agree that while sceptics will always be with us, no one is irrational in accepting what only the stubborn sceptic denies. Plantinga claims no one should be considered irrational for accepting what the religious sceptic denies either. Rather, the claim goes, belief in God should be as uncontroversial as any other properly basic belief sensible people happily hold without absolute proof sufficient to silence the sceptic. The legitimacy of placing theistic belief alongside other properly basic beliefs is challenged by the Sesame Street Objection: ‘one of these things is not like the others’.

scholarly journals A human being in meta-anthropology and transhumanism: the sense of human exsistance

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Natalia Terletska
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Points Of View

From the point of view of metaanthropology, the article analyzes the values of human being: the value of security, power, freedom, love, unity of freedom and love, as well as the value of such existentials as the sense & meaningfullness of human being & exsistance.The value of the sense of human being & exsistance is analized in a research from such points of view as: life not only for the sake of self-preservation and minimization of suffering, but also for the development, holistic harmonious realization by a humanity of such qualities that make a person capable not only for the consumering of the benefits of civilization, but also becoming a creator of culture, seeking the harmony of spiritual, soul and physical needs, the ability to express empathy and to overcome the existential problems of despair and fear of death, remaining a human creator, maintaining traditional human values and existentials, such as love and freedom.The value of the meaning of human life is analyzed in the realm of such existential concepts as free will and human right to have traditional values.The study focuses on the important theme of the loss of meaningful existentials, which, as a rule, is proposed by transhumanism, having a basis for this in the philosophy of the postmodern era, as well as the search for ways out of the existential, spiritual, soul and moral-ethical crisis in order to preserve the human values. The theoretical basis of the study was the work of philosophers of different periods, studies of psychologists and psychoanalysts, including contemporary, recent work of domestic researchers in meta-anthropology, as well as recent work of foreign representatives of transhumanism.There is made a conclusion that the unification of the values of freedom and love in a person’s life is impossible without preserving the traditional existentials of culture, in particular, such as spirituality, empathy, the capacity for compassion and feelings, which make sense of a human existence & being.

scholarly journals An Empirical Study of Personality Values and Their Influence on Personalitys Virtual Image: Component of Basic Beliefs

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruslan Zekeryaev
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Internet User ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Virtual Image ◽  
Level Of Involvement ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Person ◽  
Image Component ◽  
Basic Beliefs

The article provides a critical analysis of the literature on the researches of the sphere of personality values in the Internet space. Also, in the course of the study, it was determined that the sphere of personality values is a complex dynamic construct of the personality, which determines its inner world and outlines the vector of its activity. It was also revealed that the virtual personality of an Internet user is a complex formation that is formed during the transition of a real person to the socio-cultural space of the Internet, with subsequent integration into it and the internalization of the values and meanings of the virtual society. The virtual personality of an Internet user as a psychological phenomenon was analyzed; such properties of a virtual personality as virtuality (the degree of acceptance of virtual reality as a social environment), involvement (the level of information and computer technologies awareness and a sense of belonging to a virtual society) and orientation (the presence or absence of ideas about socially approved behavior in Internet society) are described. The article analyzes the results of an empirical study of the influence of the component of basic beliefs in the value-semantic sphere of a person on the properties of their virtual image. It was revealed that there is a correlation between the indicator of the basic belief in the benevolence of the world and the level of virtual personality (people with the belief in the benevolence of the world in the Internet space have developed motivation for creative activity), as well as a correlation between the indicator of the basic belief in the controllability of the world and the level of involvement of the virtual personality (people with a conviction of the controllability of the world in the Internet space tend to perceive themselves as a significant part of it).

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