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Does the scope of beliefs that people can form on the basis of perception remain fixed, or can it be amplified with learning? The answer to this question is important for our understanding of why and when we ought to trust experts, and also for assessing the plausibility of epistemic foundationalism. The empirical study of perceptual expertise suggests that experts can indeed enrich their perceptual experiences through learning. Yet this does not settle the epistemic status of their beliefs. One might hold that the background knowledge of experts is the cause of their enriched perceptual experience – what is known as cognitive permeation – and so their subsequent beliefs are only mediately justified because they are epistemically dependent on this background knowledge. I argue against this view. Perceptual expertise is not the result of cognitive permeation but is rather the result of perceptual learning, and perceptual learning does not involve cognition in a way that entails cognitive permeation. Perceptual expertise thus provides a means of widening the scope of the immediately justified beliefs that experts can form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jonathan Weisberg has argued that Bayesianism's rigid updating rules make Bayesian updating incompatible with undermining defeat. In this paper, I argue that when we attend to the higher-order beliefs we must ascribe to agents in the kinds of cases Weisberg considers, the problem he raises disappears. Once we acknowledge the importance of higher-order beliefs to the undermining story, we are led to a different understanding of how these cases arise. And on this different understanding of things, the rigid nature of Bayesianism's updating rules is no obstacle to its accommodating undermining defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preservationism is a dominant account of the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of memory. According to preservationism, a memory belief is justified only if that belief was justified when it was initially held. However, we now know that much (if not most) of what we remember is not explicitly stored, but instead reconstructed when we attempt to recall it. Since reconstructive memory beliefs may not have been continuously held by the agent, or never held before at all, a purely preservationist account of memory does not allow for justified reconstructed memory beliefs. In this essay, I show how a process reliabilist account can maintain preservationism about reproductive memory beliefs while accommodating the justification of reconstructive memory beliefs. I argue that reconstructive memory is an inferential process, and that therefore the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. Accordingly, my process reliabilist account combines a preservationist account of reproductive memory with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I end by defending this view against objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on view in epistemology that justifies a belief must always be a belief as Keith Lehrer dramatically puts it and there is no exit from the circle of one's beliefs. Topics include examines often the argument for this "circle-of-belief" view assumes that the only alternative is what Wilfrid Sellars stigmatizes as "the Myth of the Given" and often the conclusion drawn from it is that foundationalism cannot be the correct theory of justification.

An agent's belief in a proposition, E, is justified by an infinite regress of deferred justification just in case the belief that E is justified, and the justification for believing E proceeds from an infinite sequence of propositions, E, E, E, etc., where, for all n ≥ 0, E serves as the justification for E. In a number of recent articles, Atkinson and Peijnenburg claim to give examples where a belief is justified by an infinite regress of deferred justification. I argue here that there is no reason to regard Atkinson and Peijnenburg's examples as cases where a belief is so justified. My argument is supported by careful consideration of the grounds upon which relevant beliefs are held within Atkinson and Peijnenburg's examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent epistemology many philosophers have adhered to a moderate foundationalism according to which some beliefs do not depend on other beliefs for their justification. Reliance on such ‘basic beliefs’ pervades both internalist and externalist theories of justification. In this article I argue that the phenomenon of perceptual learning – the fact that certain ‘expert’ observers are able to form more justified basic beliefs than novice observers – constitutes a challenge for moderate foundationalists. In order to accommodate perceptual learning cases, the moderate foundationalist will have to characterize the ‘expertise’ of the expert observer in such a way that it cannot be had by novice observers and that it bestows justification on expert basic beliefs independently of any other justification had by the expert. I will argue that the accounts of expert basic beliefs currently present in the literature fail to meet this challenge, as they either result in a too liberal ascription of justification or fail to draw a clear distinction between expert basic beliefs and other spontaneously formed beliefs. Nevertheless, some guidelines for a future solution will be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The work analyses the work of the theory of the Foundationalism for its contribution to the education enhancement and its exponential growth. The study goes down to the roots of the theory to find its relevance and justification in the knowledge age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct realist versions of foundationalism (hereafter, DRF) have recently been advocated by (among others) Pryor, Huemer, Alston, and Plantinga. DRF can hold either that our foundational observation beliefs are about the simple perceptible qualities of objects (like color, shape, etc.), or that our foundational observation beliefs are more complex ones about objects in the world. I will show that whether our observational beliefs are simple or complex, the agent must possess other epistemically significant states (knowledge, or justified beliefs) in order for these observational beliefs to be justified. These other states are therefore epistemically prior to observation belief, and prevent them from being epistemically foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A warranted belief may derive inferential warrant from warranted beliefs which support it. It may possess what I call coherential warrant in virtue of being consistent with, or lacking improbability relative to, a large system of warranted beliefs. Finally, it may have foundational warrant, which does not derive from other beliefs at all. I define and distinguish these sources of warrant and explain why all three must be included in the true and complete account of the structure of knowledge, and why the first two sources are significant at all levels of knowledge. Only foundherentism and a weak version of foundationalism can satisfy this criterion. My analysis has significant, and happy, consequences for the epistemological tradition. The project of describing the structure of knowledge is nearly complete. Those who have pronounced the death of epistemology are partially correct, not because epistemology has failed, but because it has been so successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein I investigate how four dogmas underpinning the traditional concepts of universality, the genus, class, and abstract universal, generate four paradoxes of self-reference. The four dogmas are the following: (1) that contradiction entails the total absence of determinacy, (2) the necessary finitude of the concept, (3) the separation of principles of universality and particularity, and (4) the necessity of appealing to foundations. I show how these dogmas underpin the paradoxes of self-reference and how one cannot make progress on these paradoxes as long as these four dogmas are in place. Corresponding to the abovementioned dogmas are the four paradoxes of self-reference: (1a) the problem of the differentia, (2b) the problem of psychologism, (3c) the problem of participation, and (4d) the problem of ontotheology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism' (2007), 'Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition' (2006), and Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (2001), Michael Huemer endorses the principle of phenomenal conservatism, according to which appearances or seemings constitute a fundamental source of (defeasible) justification for belief. He claims that those who deny phenomenal conservatism, including classical foundationalists, are in a self-defeating position, for their views cannot be both true and justified; that classical foundationalists have difficulty accommodating false introspective beliefs; and that phenomenal conservatism is most faithful to the central internalist intuition. I argue that Huemer's self-defeat argument fails, that classical foundationalism is able to accommodate fallible introspective beliefs, and that classical foundationalism has no difficulty accommodating a relatively clear internalist intuition. I also show that the motivation for phenomenal conservatism is less than clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Philosophers commonly define knowledge as justified true beliefs. A heated debate exists, however, about what makes a belief justified. In this article, we examine the question of belief justification from a psychological perspective, focusing on the subjective confidence in a belief that the person has just formed. Participants decided whether to accept or reject a proposition depicting a social belief, and indicated their confidence in their choice. The task was repeated six times, and choice latency was measured. The results were analyzed within a Self-Consistency Model (SCM) of subjective confidence. According to SCM, the decision to accept or reject a proposition is based on the on-line sampling of representations from a pool of representations associated with the proposition. Respondents behave like intuitive statisticians who infer the central tendency of a population based on a small sample. Confidence depends on the consistency with which the belief was supported across the sampled representations, and reflects the likelihood that a new sample will yield the same decision. The results supported the assumption of a commonly shared population of representations associated with each proposition. Based on this assumption, analyses of within-person consistency and cross-person consensus provided support for the model. As expected, choices that deviated from the person’s own modal judgment or from the consensually held judgment took relatively longer to form and were associated with relatively lower confidence, presumably because they were based on non-representative samples. The results were discussed in relation to major epistemological theories – foundationalism, coherentism and reliabilism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

abstract Often coherentism is taken to be the view that justification is solely a function of the coherence among a person's beliefs. I offer a counterexample to the idea that when so understood coherence is sufficient for justification. I then argue that the counterexample will still work if coherence is understood as coherence among a person's beliefs and experiences. I defend a form of nondoxastic foundationalism that takes sensations and philosophical intuitions as basic and sees nearly all other justification as depending on inference to the best explanation. I take up Wilfrid Sellars's Dilemma, which starts with the idea that the foundations must be either propositional in nature or not. The argument continues: if they are, they stand in need of justification; if they are not, they cannot confer justification. It concludes that there cannot be foundations that confer justification on other beliefs. I deny both horns of this dilemma, arguing that philosophical intuitions are propositional but do not stand in need of justification and that sensations are not propositional but can confer justification on perceptual beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the use of probability theory in understanding and evaluating the coherence theory of justification. It explores the core commitments of coherentism and the different challenges confronting coherence theory based on the theorems of probability. Moreover, it argues that foundationalism provides a reasonable account of the structure of one's actual beliefs.

Many epistemologists accept some version of the following foundationalist epistemic principle: if one has an experience as if p then one has prima facie justification that p. I argue that this principle faces a challenge that it inherits from classical foundationalism: the problem of the speckled hen. The crux of the problem is that some properties are presented in experience at a level of determinacy that outstrips our recognitional capacities. I argue for an amendment to the principle that adds to its antecedent the requirement that the subject have a recognitional capacity with respect to the given property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has argued against moral intuitionism, according to which some of our moral beliefs are justified without needing to be inferred from any other beliefs. He claims that any prima facie justification some non-inferred moral beliefs might have enjoyed is removed because many of our moral beliefs are formed in circumstances where either (1) we are partial, (2) others disagree with us and there is no reason to prefer our moral judgement to theirs, (3) we are emotional in a way that clouds our judgement, (4) the circumstances are conducive to illusion, or (5) the source of our moral beliefs is unreliable or disreputable. I take issue with the elements of Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument that centre on (1) to (3) and (5), concluding that his case against moral intuitionism is unpersuasive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides the author's insights regarding the proposed solution of Richard Fumerton and Laurence Bonjour to the classical foundationalism and the cases of three and 48 speckled hen. It notes that Fumerton proposed that limited appearance states, intentional states, direct acquaintance with the properties of experience, and direct acquaintance with the correspondence of belief and experience of foundationally justified beliefs change as people develop new recognition skills. Meanwhile, Feldman proposed that a person is foundationally justified in believing that he is having an experience with quality F if he is experientially-aware, attends, believes, and refer to property F. However, it suggests that the proposals do not answer and avoid the speckled hen problem.

In specifying the sensory evidence for perceptual belief, thinkers have either chosen a common perceptual idiom or have invented one of their own as a starting-point for their enquiries. It is becoming clearer that the choice harbours crucial, often disputable, assumptions. I compare two sorts of constructions, a variety of propositional ones and an objectual one, and I argue that the objectual idiom is indispensable in order to explain how a perceptual belief can arise out of what is not already a belief. This has implications not only for the question of how belief is generated from perceptual evidence, but also for various other controversies. I discuss two of these implications: the character of inferences from evidence, and basic belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that there is no viable alternative to construing our knowledge and justified belief as resting on a foundation restricted to truths about our internal states. Against Williamson and others I defend the claim that the internal life of a cognizer really does constitute a special sort of cognitive home that is importantly different from the rest of what we think we know and justifiably believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sellarsian dilemma is a famous argument that attempts to show that nondoxastic experiential states cannot confer justification on basic beliefs. The usual conclusion of the Sellarsian dilemma is a coherentist epistemology, and the usual response to the dilemma is to find it quite unconvincing. By distinguishing between two importantly different justification relations (evidential and nonevidential), I hope to show that the Sellarsian dilemma, or something like it, does offer a powerful argument against standard nondoxastic foundationalist theories. But this reconceived version of the argument does not support coherentism. Instead, I use it to argue for a strongly externalist epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that our justification for beliefs about the external physical world need not be constituted by any justified beliefs about perceptual experiences. In this way our justification for beliefs about the physical world may be nondoxastic and this differentiates my proposal from traditional foundationalist theories such as those defended by Laurence BonJour, Richard Fumerton, and Timothy McGrew. On the other hand, it differs from certain non-traditional foundationalist theories such as that defended by James Pryor according to which perceptual experience is sufficient to justify beliefs about the external world. I propose that justification for propositions describing our perceptual experiences partially constitutes any justification we may possess for beliefs concerning the external world. In this way, our justification for beliefs about the physical world may only be inferential since it is grounded in any justification we have for at least one other proposition. This theory occupies an intermediate position between the two aforementioned foundationalist accounts, which allows it to sidestep problems that confront each of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I provide a construal of the epistemic regress problem and I take issue with the contention that a foundationalist solution is incompatible with an internalist account of warrant. I sketch a foundationalist solution to the regress problem that respects a plausible version of internalism. I end with the suggestion that the strategy that I have presented is not available only to the traditional versions of foundationalism that ascribe foundational status to experiential beliefs. It can also be used to generate a version of internalist foundationalism based on reliabilist principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to comments by philosopher Darrell Rowbottom regarding the view of philosopher Tom Stoneham on coherentism. He notes Rowbottom's claim that finite beliefs that support each other epistemically are not clearly indicative of coherentism and suggests Rowbottom's example is not justified by coherentism or foundationalism.

According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember that P while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Properly understood, foundationalism as a meta-epistemic theory is consistent with skepticism. This article outlines five possible points of overlap between the two views, and shows that arguments against foundationalism posited on its inability to refute skepticism are improperly framed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the tradition of justified true belief theory, I provide an epistemic responsibility-based philosophical analysis of collective knowledge which is both coherentist and reliabilist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on being an infinitist about doxastic justification. According to the author, defining the accounts of propositional justification is important in understanding the three concepts of doxastic justification engaged by the foundationalist, infinitist, and coherentist. People's beliefs can be doxastically even if the beliefs from which they are incidental are unjustified.

Abstract: Like many discussions on the pros and cons of epistemic foundationalism, the debate between C. I. Lewis and H. Reichenbach dealt with three concerns: the existence of basic beliefs, their nature, and the way in which beliefs are related. In this paper we concentrate on the third matter, especially on Lewis’s assertion that a probability relation must depend on something that is certain, and Reichenbach’s claim that certainty is never needed. We note that Lewis’s assertion is prima facie ambiguous, but argue that this ambiguity is only apparent if probability theory is viewed within a modal logic. Although there are empirical situations where Reichenbach is right, and others where Lewis’s reasoning seems to be more appropriate, it will become clear that Reichenbach’s stance is the generic one. We conclude that this constitutes a threat to epistemic foundationalism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article modifies Susan Haack's foundherentist position on foundationalism and coherentism to present a feasible model for the justification of religious belief. Foundherentism is a theory of justification which is supposed to include the virtues of both a foundationalist and coherentist epistemology without their respective vices. The plausibility of a cognitive voluntarist conception of belief is argued upon. There is some virtue in coherentism which ought to be salvaged and incorporated into the theory of justification.

Nonskeptical foundationalists say that there are basic beliefs. But, one might object, either there is a reason why basic beliefs are likely to be true or there is not. If there is, then they are not basic; if there is not, then they are arbitrary. I argue that this dilemma is not nearly as decisive as its author, Peter Klein, would have us believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary foundationalists prefer Moderate Foundationalism over Strong Foundationalism. In this paper, we assess two arguments against the former which have been recently defended by Timothy McGrew. Three theses are central to the discussion: that only beliefs can be probabilifying evidence, that justification is internal, in McGrew's sense of the term, and that only beliefs can be nonarbitrary justifying reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the epistemology of foundationalism. Causal relation between experiences and beliefs; Concept of justification; Terminal points of explanations for perceptual beliefs about objective properties; Justification of beliefs about appearances.

An essay is presented on the rejection by philosopher Donald Davidson of experiential foundationalism. Davidson argues that experience cannot be a reason, source/ground of justification, or an epistemological basis of a belief. It notes that several arguments opposing experiential foundationalism fail.

The article presents views of philosopher Laurence BonJour on foundationalism philosophy. It mentions that basic beliefs comprise the foundation of a person's network of justified beliefs. BonJour argues that a belief is justified only if there is a reason to be true and a belief is justified for a person only if he is in cognitive possession of such a reason. The author objects BonJour's arguments which lead to global skepticism.

The article presents the view of the author on the article "Mind" by S.H. Foulkes and "Group Analysis Has No Theory! Foulkes Failed Us. Did He?" by Olov Dahlin. According to the author, Foulkes might not be the most engaging of writers, yet he seemed to have the knack of raising subtle questions in the reader. His is a suggestive style willing the reader on to think for themselves. The author found the paper of Dahlin, as playful, evocative and provocative. Foulkes was acting as a good facilitator, not quite answering his own questions, but posing problems and inviting the reader to struggle. Dahlin previously asserted that Foulkes does not lack a theory as such, but a metatheory. "Foundationalism" is defined as an effort to secure the ground, the ultimate ground on which judgment can be made. It is about achieving clarity, the reduction of doubt, discerning the ultimate categories of thinking or rationality. The article states that, Dahlin is right to say that group analysis did not develop a metatheory. Foundation provides security, bearings and a place from which people build and look at the edifice of psychoanalysis over the decade.