I. The Basic Idea

 

Cartesian foundationalism got into trouble because it asserted that we were infallible about our own internal states, that every justified belief depended on beliefs about internal states, and that deduction was the only way to transfer justification from what’s basic to what’s not. But these problematic features can be dropped without giving up the general foundationalist picture. And we can avoid what seems to be the central flaw in coherentism - that it omits the role of experience in the account of justification. 

 

What’s basic: typically, perceptual beliefs about the world around us.

Non-basic justification: induction, inference to the best explanation.

 

Go over detailed example; review principles from text.

 

II. Some Comments

 

1) We often don’t explicitly form the beliefs that this theory takes to be basic. Upon hearing the rain, I may just think: I’d better close the windows. I don’t think “It’s raining.” So, an objection like the one lodged against Cartesian foundationalism applies here.

Reply: The idea that we have implicit beliefs in which we classify external objects in familiar categories is sensible - those are beliefs that we would accept if asked. Compare what was said about the introspective beliefs Cartesian foundationalism required.

 

2) It does not say that introspective beliefs about mental states are never justified, or that they are not basic. They can be. It just doesn’t require that we always have these beliefs.

 

3) The hardest question for the theory concerns which beliefs get justified by experience. The standard idea is that memory, introspection, and perception yield justified basic beliefs. Why these? How do we decide on them?

 

4) A real virtue of modest foundationalism is that can allow the basic beliefs to be unjustified when one has counter evidence. And it can allow for them to get additional justification from other sources.

 

5) By dropping the deduction requirement, it does much better in accounting for non-basic justification.

 

III. Problems

 

1) To be discussed later. How, exactly, do you get from the wider class of basic beliefs to everything else. See pp. 72-3 of the text. Is this principle ok? Skeptics argue that it is not, and we will turn to their arguments soon.

 

2) BonJour has an argument designed to show that nothing could be basic. See p. 75f. Here is the key point: it’s not the case that you have to know that perception is reliable to be justified in beliefs about the world on the basis of perception. Experiences like the ones you are having now justify a “lights on” belief. You don’t need to know, or justifiably believe, anything like: these experiences justify that belief. You don’t have to know that usually the lights are on when you have this experience. Of course, if you think about it, you probably do know that. So you have a TIF argument. But you don’t need it.

 

3) But which beliefs are justified basic beliefs? The key idea is that not all spontaneous beliefs are justified. I introduce the idea of a “proper response” to experience. But that’s pretty obscure. What counts? It would be nice to have a better account of this.