Epistemology Notes

Chapter 4

Theories of Justification:

Foundationalism and Coherentism



 
 
 

1.  The Epistemic Regress Argument

1.  Notice that Lawrence Bonjour formulates the Epistemic Regress Argument in terms of knowledge, rather than in terms of justified belief, even though the only aspect of the concept of knowledge that enters into Bonjour's formulation of the argument is that the belief be justified.

2.  An exposition of the Epistemic Regress Argument:

        First, there seem to be only four possibilities with regard to inferentially justified beliefs:

(1)  The regress of justification is a finite one, with the justification of a given belief terminating in one or more beliefs that are justified, but without being justified on the basis of any other beliefs.  So justification terminates in non-inferentially justified beliefs.

(2)  The regress of justification is infinite: every inferentially justified belief is justified on the basis of one or more beliefs that are also inferentially justified - and only inferentially justified - and no belief ever occurs twice in the resulting sequences of justified beliefs.

(3)  Every inferentially justified belief is justified on the basis of one or more beliefs that are also inferentially justified, but there is no infinite regress, since any such sequence of inferentially justified beliefs contains only a finite number of members, and one is thus always led back either to the first belief, or else to some later belief, in the chain of justification.  Inferential justification, in short, involves one or more circles or loops.

(4)  The regress of justification is finite, and one is never led back to the starting point.  Nor does the regress terminate in non-inferentially justified beliefs.  It terminates, instead, in one or more beliefs that are not justified - either inferentially or non-inferentially.

        Secondly, the argument then runs as follows:

(1)  If possibility (4) obtained, then the belief in question would not be justified.  One cannot arrive at justified beliefs on the basis of unjustified beliefs.

(2)  The infinite regress required by possibility (2) seems most unlikely - at least for humans - but, even if there were such an infinite regress of beliefs justified relative to other beliefs, it would not suffice to justify any of the beliefs in the regress.

(3)  Justification involving a circle is unacceptable for essentially the same reason.

(4)  Hence the only way to avoid a skeptical conclusion concerning the possibility of inferentially justified beliefs is possibility (1):  justification must terminate in beliefs that are non-inferentially justified, beliefs that are justified without being justified on the basis of evidence.

Comments

1.  If a belief is not justified unless its probability is above a certain number p, then the claim just made would appear to be false.  The term "justified" here has to be interpreted as meaning:  "having a probability that is greater than its a priori probability."

Reason

There can, it would seem, be cases where there are a number of beliefs, none of which is more likely to be true than false, but which nonetheless render some other belief likely to be true.  For consider the following:

B1:  Mary told me that p; B2:  John told me that p; B3:  Bruce told me that p; ..... Bn:  Suzanne told me that p; Suppose now that my state is such - perhaps I am slightly drunk - that I am somewhat inclined to believe each of these - it seems to me that it may be that I remember the corresponding event - but, given that I am aware of my present state, I think, of each potential memory, that it probably is not reliable.  Nevertheless, though each individual potential memory is probably mistaken, what about the following, disjunctive belief:

B:  Either B1 or B2 or B3 or ... Bn  ?

        For this belief to be mistaken, all of B1, B2, B3, ... Bn would have to be mistaken, and while it is likely that each one is mistaken, the probability that they are all mistaken might very well be much less than one half.  So it may be likely that B is true, even though none of the Bi upon which it is based is likely to be true.  (Then, if one is justified in believing that the individuals in question - Mary, John, Bruce, ... Suzanne - are trustworthy, one may be justified in going on to conclude that p is true.)

In short:  It seems that beliefs that are unlikely to be true can justify beliefs that are likely to be true.

2.  What support can one offer for the claim that if possibility (2) or possibility (3), above, obtained, then the original belief would not be justified?  One natural idea is to say that for one belief to be justified relative to another is just for a statement like the following to be true:

If E1 is justified, then B is justified.

        If so, then the point can be put as follows.  All the relations of relative justification - of one belief's being justified in terms of some other belief - are a matter of a certain conditional statement's being true.  But to show that B is justified, one has to establish an unconditional statement.  No unconditional statement, however, of the relevant form, is entailed by the conditional statements in question, regardless of whether the latter are finite in number or infinite in number.  So neither relative justification in a circle, nor an infinite regress of relative justification, will suffice to justify a given belief.
 
 

2.  Skepticism, Foundationalism, and Coherentism

1.  Three main options: skepticism, foundationalism, and coherentism.

2.  These are options both with regard to (a) knowledge, and (b) justified belief.  (Comments on Pojman and Lehrer with regard to use of the term 'skepticism'.)

3.  The present Epistemic Regress Argument, though it has been put forward as a justification of foundationalism, can be turned into an argument in support of skepticism.  For if it is successful against coherentism, and if one can also argue - as Bonjour does - that the idea of non-inferentially justified beliefs is, in the end, untenable, both foundationalism and coherentism will be ruled out, and only skepticism will remain.

4.  Such an argument for skepticism is deeper than the type of argument previously considered, since the conclusion would be, not merely that there are no inferentially justified beliefs, but that there are no justified beliefs at all - either inferentially justified or non-inferentially justified.
 
 

3.  Foundationalism

1.  Foundationalism:  classic versus moderate versus weak.  What is common and moderate foundationalism:  (1)  The existence of noninferential knowledge, or noninferentially justified beliefs; (2)  All other knowledge is justified on the basis of noninferential knowledge, or all other justified beliefs are justified on the basis of noninferentially justified beliefs.

2.  Classic foundationalism:  Indubitable and infallible starting points, plus deductive inference.

3.  The main problem with classic foundationalism is that the link between what we are noninferentially justified in believing, and what we are inferentially justified in believing, cannot, it would seem, be deductive in nature.  (Brain in vat type arguments.  Bishop Berkeley's philosophy.  Puppets controlled by some sort of deity, or powerful extra-terrestrial being, in the case of beliefs about other minds.  Gosse's hypothesis in the case of knowledge of the past.)

4.  Moderate foundationalism.  This may differ from classic foundationalism in either or both of the following ways:  (a)  It may be held that noninferential knowledge is not indubitable, or that noninferentially justified belief is not infallible;  (b)  It may be held that the relation between what is noninferentially known (or justified) and what is inferentially known (or justified) is not deductive.

5.  Weak foundationalism.  This differs from both classic and moderate foundationalism in holding that the starting points for the justification of beliefs are (a) beliefs that have some epistemic warrant independently of their relations to other justified beliefs, but (b) where the warrant is not sufficient to make the beliefs in question such as are more likely to be true than false, and thus such as are prima facie credible.  The idea is that such beliefs that have some warrant - beyond their a priori probability - but which are not themselves prima facie credible, can nevertheless serve as a starting point for justification.  (The earlier discussion, at the end of Section 1 above, indicates how that might be possible.  Compare, also, Bonjour's characterization and discussion of weak foundationalism in Section II of his article "A Critique of Foundationalism", page 215 in the Pojman anthology.)

4.  Two Arguments in Support of Foundationalism

        Foundationalism is typically supported by two arguments:

(1)  The Epistemic Regress Argument

        Perhaps the most commonly used argument in support of foundationalism is the epistemic regress argument, which we have already considered.

(2)  The Evidentially Isolated, Justified Belief Argument

        The epistemic regress argument, if sound, shows only that if one is to be justified in believing anything, there must be some beliefs that are justified even if one cannot offer any evidence in support of them.  It provides one, however, with no indication of what sorts of beliefs might be non-inferentially justified.  This second argument, by contrast, focuses upon certain states of affairs, and appeals to intuitions to the effect that beliefs about such states of affairs are justified, even in the absence of other beliefs that would provide evidence for them.

        Suppose, for example, that you are experiencing a tingling sensation.  It would seem that it might very well be the case that there is nothing else that one believes at the time that would provide evidence for the claim that one is experiencing a tingling sensation.  But even if that were so, wouldn't it still be true that one was justified in believing that one was experiencing a tingling sensation?  So aren't there some beliefs that are non-inferentially justified?

        A slightly different way of putting this argument is to imagine that, for example, one is suffering from total amnesia, that one is in a sensorily deprived state, and that the only experience one is having is a tingling sensation.  Then, if one believes that one is experiencing a tingling sensation, that belief may be evidentially isolated because it is the only belief that one has.  So if the belief that one is experiencing a tingling sensation would be justified in such circumstances, it would have to be non-inferentially justified, since it is the only belief that one has.

        In contrast to the epistemic regress argument, the present argument does not show that all of one's justified beliefs are ultimately justified on the basis of beliefs that are non-inferentially justified.  For the present argument does not itself rule out the possibility that while there are non-inferentially justified beliefs, some inferentially justified beliefs, rather than being justified on the basis of non-inferentially justified beliefs, are justified in the manner proposed by coherentism.  However, given that the main way of supporting coherentism, as we shall see later, involves setting aside the epistemic regress argument on the ground that the notion of non-inferentially justified belief is, in the end, problematic, it would seem that, once some non-inferentially justified belief is admitted, there is good reason to adopt a foundationalist approach, and thus to hold that all justified beliefs are either non-inferentially justified, or else inferentially justified on the basis of non-inferentially justified beliefs.
 
 

5.  Some Possible Characteristics of Noninferential Knowledge, or of Noninferentially Justified Belief

1.  Infallibility:  a noninferentially justified belief cannot possibly be mistaken;

2.  Objective certainty:  one is justified in betting at any odds on the truth of a noninferentially justified belief;

3.  Subjective certainty:  One is willing to bet at any odds on the truth of a noninferentially justified belief;

4.  Indubitability.  When a belief is spoken of as indubitable, this can be interpreted in either a psychological sense or a logical sense.  On the former interpretation, it would be a matter of its being psychologically impossible to entertain any doubts about the truth of the belief in question, and that sounds very similar to subjective certainty.  On the logical interpretation, on the other hand, the idea is that if one attempts to entertain a doubt about the belief, it turns out that such a doubt is self-defeating, in the sense that one is led back to the very belief that one is attempting to doubt.  Cartesian illustration: if you doubt whether you are thinking, then that very act of doubting whether you are thinking is itself an act of thinking.

Comment:  Indubitability in this logical sense of doubt being self-defeating would seem to be very limited in scope.  Thus, while it may be psychologically impossible for Mary to doubt whether she is in pain, if she were to be able to entertain such a doubt, it doesn't look as if it would be self-defeating: to doubt whether one is thinking may itself be a case of thinking, whereas to doubt whether one is in pain would surely not itself be a case of being in pain.

5.  Indefeasibility.  A belief, B, that is non-inferentially justified at time t is indefeasible if and only if there is no evidence which is such that if the person in question had it at time t, he or she would no longer be justified in accepting B.  An indefeasible belief, in short, is one that is not susceptible to being overthrown by additional evidence, at the time in question.  (Illustrate the indefeasibility issue by the autocerebroscope case.)
 
 

6.  Coherentism

        What is coherentism?  The non-skeptical alternative to foundationalism is a little more difficult to characterize precisely than foundationalism is.  But one way of approaching the task of characterizing coherentism is via a bit of a historical digression.

6.1  Coherence Theories of Truth

1.  Coherence theories of truth are an alternative to correspondence theories of truth.  Characterization of correspondence theories of truth: sentences, or statements, or propositions, have structure, and so do states of affairs in the world, and truth is a matter of a certain relation between elements of the former and elements of the latter.  "Fido is a dog" illustration.

2.  A coherence theory of truth as an alternative to a correspondence: truth is not a matter of a relation between propositions and something else, but simply a matter of a certain relation among propositions - what was referred to as the relation of coherence.

3.  But what is coherence?  The usual answer here starts out from the idea that if one considers any two propositions, p and q, then there are three possibilities with respect to the bearing of proposition p upon proposition q:  (1)  proposition p might make q more likely, might raise the probability that q is true;  (2)  proposition p might make q less likely, might lower the probability that q is true;  (3)  proposition p might be neutral with respect to proposition q  - neither making it more likely that q is true, nor less likely that q is true.  And one could then say that propositions p and q provide mutual support for each other if each makes it more likely that the other is true.  And finally, one could describe a large system or set of propositions as coherent to the extent that subsets of propositions mutually supported one another.

4.  One standard objection to a coherence theory of truth was that given any set of statements of propositions that it might be suggested were true, in view of the relations of mutual support which they exhibited, one could find another set of statements or propositions, that were incompatible with the first, but which exhibited equally impressive relations of mutual support among the propositions in the set.

        How might one support that claim?  One idea is to make systematic substitutions in the original set of statements.

Illustration:

First set:                                                              Second set:

(1)  Fido is green.                                             (1*)  Fido is red.

(2)  Socksie is red.                                           (2*)  Socksie is green.

(3)  Fido looks green to Socksie.                       (3*)  Fido looks red to Socksie

(4)  Socksie looks red to Fido.                           (4*)  Socksie looks green to Fido
 
 

6.2  Coherence Theories of Justification

        So much for the coherence theory of truth, and one important objection to it.  Some philosophers suggested that perhaps what coherence was really relevant to was not truth, but either (i) knowledge, or (ii) justified belief.

1.  But won't the same problem arise?  That is to say, if what beliefs are justified is a matter of relations of mutual support among propositions, then won't one run, once again, into the Fido/Socksie sort of objection?  The answer is that once one shifts from a coherence theory of truth to a coherence theory of knowledge, or of justified belief, then one can shift from considering relations of coherence among statements or propositions to considering relations of coherence, or mutual support, among beliefs.

2.  The coherence view of knowledge, or of justified belief, is therefore roughly as follows.  Consider the total set of everything that you presently believe.  It can happen that not all of your beliefs fit together in a very satisfactory fashion, in the sense that there may be some belief, B, that is really rather improbable, given the other things that you believe.  (Young earth example.)  So it may be that if you were to abandon some of your present beliefs, the result would be a set of beliefs that would be more coherent, in that each belief in the resulting set would be supported, to a reasonable extent, by the remaining beliefs.  Tension, or conflict between different beliefs would be eliminated, or at least reduced to a minimum.

3.  How does shifting from a coherence theory of truth to a coherence theory of justified belief improve the situation?  In the case of truth, one can generate alternative sets of propositions, and so the question of why some such alternative set isn't true is a pressing one.  If one generates, in the same fashion, an alternative set of beliefs, then the point can be made that the alternative set may not be a set of beliefs that anyone actually accepts, and so there is no immediate problem.

        One might try to press the point by saying that they are at least possible beliefs - beliefs that someone could accept.  In response the advocate of a coherentist approach to justified belief will presumably say that beliefs that are merely logically possible are not relevant to the theory that he or she is proposing.  For beliefs that are merely logically possible may not be such as anyone could actually come to have in the world as it is, and it is only beliefs that are possible in that latter, much more robust sense, that one needs to be concerned about.
 
 

6.3  Two Arguments Against Foundationalism, and in Support of Coherentism

        Larry Bonjour's defense of coherentism is as follows.  First, he grants that the epistemic regress argument does show that a foundationalist approach is prima facie plausible.  He argues, however, that when foundationalism is carefully examined, it turns out to suffer from fatal flaws.  In support of the latter claim, Bonjour offers two, interrelated arguments, each of which concerns the issue of whether it is reasonable, in the final analysis, to believe that some beliefs can be justified without being supported by evidence.

6.3.1   Argument 1:  Doxastic Ascent

        Formulations of this type of argument are found in Ernie Sosa's article, "The Raft and the Pyramid:  Coherence Versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge", and in Larry Bonjour's "A Critique of Foundationalism".  Sosa, for example, offers the following summary:
 

"A belief B is foundationally justified for S in virtue of having a property F only if S is justified in believing (1) that most at least of his beliefs with property F are true, and (2) that B has property F.  But this means that belief B is not foundational after all, and indeed that the very notion of (empirical) foundational belief is incoherent."  (Pojman's anthology, 260)


        A similar, but fuller statement of the argument is offered by Bonjour:
 

"If we let 'Ï' represent this feature, then for a belief B to qualify as basic in an acceptable foundationalist account, the premises of the following justificatory argument must themselves be at least justified:

(i)    Belief B has feature Ï.

(ii)   Beliefs having feature Ï are highly likely to be true.

Therefore, B is highly likely to be true.

Notice further that while either premise taken separately might turn out to be justifiable on an a priori basis (depending on the particular choice of Ï), it seems clear that they could not both be thus justifiable.  For B is ex hypothesi an empirical belief, and it is hard to see how a particular empirical belief could be justified on a purely a priori basis.  And if we now assume, reasonably enough, that for B to be justified for a particular person (at a particular time) it is necessary, not merely that a justification for B exist in the abstract, but that the person in question be in cognitive possession of that justification, we get the result that B is not basic after all since its justification depends on that of at least one other empirical belief.  If this is correct, strong foundationalism is untenable as a solution to the regress problem (and an analogous argument will show weak foundationalism to be similarly untenable)."  (Pojman's anthology, 216)


Comments:  The Structure of Bonjour's Argument

(1)  Let us consider a concrete version of Bonjour's argument.  In particular, let B be the belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation, and let feature Ï be the property of being a belief about one's own present experience.  The above schema then becomes:

A.    My belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is a belief by me about my own present experience.

B.    Beliefs by me about my own present experience are highly likely to be true.

C.    Therefore, my belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is highly likely to be true.

(2)  Bonjour's argument then appears to be as follows.  First, why does the foundationalist need to be able to appeal to the above sort of schema?  Bonjour's answer is that, first, any satisfactory account of the notion of epistemic justification must connect up with the idea of being epistemically responsible, and secondly, a particular standard of epistemic justification can be defensible only if beliefs that are in accordance with that standard are likely to be true.  So if the belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is to be non-inferentially justified, then it must be the case that it is likely to be true.  In addition, the reason why this is so must in some sense be accessible to me, for otherwise my acceptance of that belief would not be epistemically responsible.

(3)  Given this starting point, the second step in Bonjour's argument involves asking what sort of justification might be offered for premises A and B.  One possibility is that both A and B might both be justified in an a priori fashion - that is, in a way that did not depend upon the way the world is, as a matter of fact.  But it would then follow, since A and B entail C, that C would have to be a necessary truth.  But this is impossible, since C expresses a contingent proposition that might very well be false.

(4)  Thirdly, if it is not possible to justify both A and B in a priori fashion, then either A or B is an empirical belief, and so given that an argument of the above sort is needed if my belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is to be justified, it follows that the belief that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation stands in need of empirical support, and so cannot be a non-inferentially justified belief.

Critical Evaluation of Bonjour's Argument

(1)  The above argument from A and B to C is capable of being interpreted in two different ways. The first interpretation can be put as follows:

Interpretation 1

A.    I do in fact believe that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation and that belief is a belief by me about my own present experience.

B.    Beliefs by me about my own present experience are highly likely to be true.

C.    Therefore, I do in fact believe that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation, and that belief is highly likely to be true.

        The second interpretation can be put in either of two slightly different ways.  One involves making use of conditional statements to formulate both premise A and the conclusion:

Interpretation 2a:

A.    If I were to believe now that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation then that would be a belief by me about my own present experience.

B.    Beliefs by me about my own present experience are highly likely to be true.

C.    Therefore, if I were to believe now that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation then that would be a belief that was highly likely to be true.

        Alternatively, one can refer, in premise A, not to a belief, but to the corresponding proposition:

Interpretation 2b:

A.    The proposition that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is a proposition about my own present experience.

B.    Whenever I believe a proposition about my own present experience, that belief is highly likely to be true.

C.    Therefore, the proposition that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation is such that if I were to believe it, that belief would be highly likely to be true.

        On interpretation 1, statement A clearly cannot be justified in purely a priori fashion, since it involves the contingent claim that I do in fact have a certain belief at the present moment.  The same is true of the conclusion - statement C - for the same reason.  But on interpretation 2, in contrast - both in the form 2a and in the form 2b - neither statement A nor statement C has any such implication, and the question then becomes what is wrong with both premises A and B being justified in a priori fashion if interpretation 2 is adopted.  It will still follow, of course - just as in the case of interpretation 1 - that conclusion C must be a necessary truth, but that is not problematic in the case of interpretation 2, in the way it is in the case of interpretation 1, since now the conclusion no longer says that I actually have a belief that is very likely to be true.  Moreover, it is not at all obvious that there is anything wrong with the view that the conclusion expresses a necessary truth.

(2)  The upshot is that, if interpretation 2 is the correct interpretation of the Bonjour's argument, then there doesn't seem to be any reason, as far as the preceding argument goes, why both A and B, and therefore also C, mightn't be justified in an a priori fashion.

(3)  Although Bonjour does not say so in the present argument, he does, think, I believe, that premise B does not express an a priori truth.  For in an article "A Holistic Coherentism" (First edition of Pojman's anthology), he considers the following claim

        (*) Introspective beliefs (of certain sorts) are very likely to be true

and he explicitly says that this is an empirical premise.  But, as I shall be arguing later, this latter view seems very problematic.  If I am right about this, then no problem arises if one adopts interpretation 2.

(4)  Perhaps, however, Bonjour has interpretation 1 in mind?  But then the argument seems very suspicious, for two reasons.  First of all, if, in order to be justified in believing that

E:    I am now experiencing a tingling sensation

it is being asserted that I have to be justified in accepting both A and B, under interpretation 1, then it is being asserted that I have to be justified in believing:

B(E):   I now believe that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation.

        But what reason is there to think that my being justified in believing that I am now in some mental state M is based upon, or rests upon, my being justified in believing that I now believe that I am in mental state M?  For even if having a belief about one's own present mental state involves being aware of that mental state, and even if awareness of a mental state entails (at least) potential awareness of the awareness, this would show only that being justified in believing that B(E) is a logically necessary condition of being justified in believing that E.  It would not show that one's being justified in believing that E is in any way based upon one's being justified in believing that B(E).  Moreover, the idea that one's being justified in believing that E is based upon one's being justified in believing that B(E) is surely very implausible, since it would seem that any awareness that one is aware that one is in a certain mental state itself derives from the awareness that one is in the mental state in question.  So how can any justification of the former possibly underpin one's justification of the latter?

        But secondly, suppose that, given interpretation 2, premises A and B are susceptible of an a priori justification.  They then entail C, which on the second interpretation asserts that if I were now to have a belief that I am now having a tingling sensation, that belief would very likely be true.  But, then, must not the truth of this conclusion suffice to ensure that I am acting in an epistemically responsible way in having the belief in question, and, if so, why isn't the foundationalist correct in holding that the belief in question is non-inferentially justified?

6.3.2   Argument 2:   Is the Idea of the Given Ultimately Coherent?

        One way in which one might try to support the idea that some beliefs can be non-inferentially justified - that is, that one can be justified in believing some things even if one cannot offer any evidence in support of the beliefs in question - is by appealing to the idea that some states of affairs are immediately given, that the mind is directly presented with some things.  Thus it is often claimed, for example, that one is directly acquainted with one's own present experiences, and possibly with other mental states, such as thoughts.  Talk about something being "immediately given", or "directly presented" to the mind, or about one's being "directly acquainted" with some state of affairs is, admittedly, not easy to cash out.  Is it, for example, a matter of causal immediacy?  That may be part of it - though even that is not clear.  But if causal immediacy is involved, it seems clear that that is not the whole story.  For the idea that one is trying to capture here is intimately connected with consciousness, and it seems clear that consciousness is not to be explained in terms of, or simply in terms of, causal immediacy.  For any causal process can be divided into two parts such that one is causally immediately before the other.

        So the idea of the immediately given is not unproblematic.  Bonjour, however, is advancing a stronger claim - namely, that it is very unlikely that one can, in the end, make sense of the notion of the given.  In support of this claim, he argues that the idea of "the given" involves the idea of states that seem to oscillate between being cognitive states and being non-cognitive states, and neither way of conceiving them is satisfactory.  For, Bonjour argues, on the one hand, it is hard to see how the given could be a non-cognitive state - and so a state with no propositional content - since the given is supposed to justify one in having a certain belief, and it is hard, he contends, to see how anything that is not a cognitive state can provide support for a belief, can make it likely that a belief is true  But, on the other hand, if what is given is itself a cognitive state, then it involves propositional content, and the question arises as to what reason there is for thinking that the proposition in question is true, and one is once again off on a regress.

        Could there be some sort of intermediate state - some sort of quasi-cognitive state, that involves both cognitive elements and non-cognitive elements?  This is a natural way of thinking about a state such as an awareness that one is having, say, a tickling sensation.  For on the one hand, if one is aware that one is having a tickling sensation, doesn't that imply that one believes that one is having a tickling sensation?  And, on the other hand, mustn't there be more to the awareness that one is having a tickling sensation - namely, the having of the tickling sensation - and mustn't the latter involve something more than - or something different from - the mere presence of beliefs, or other 'propositional attitude' sorts of states.

        Bonjour argues, however, that the idea of a quasi-cognitive state will not help here.  For the postulation of any state that involves propositional content means that one is confronted with the question of how the propositional content that is present in the quasi-cognitive state is itself justified.

        What the foundationalist needs is a state that has both of the following two properties:  (1) it is a state that can serve to justify beliefs;  (2) it is a state that does not itself stand in need of justification.  Bonjour contends that no state can possibly possess both of those properties, since, he claims, to possess the first property it must have propositional content, but having propositional content means that it is a state that itself stands in need of justification.

Comments

(1)  The idea of the given is closely connected with the idea of consciousness, and I think it is reasonable to believe that one cannot expect to have a satisfactory account of givenness until one has an account of consciousness.  But to provide the latter is, arguably, the most difficult problem in philosophy of mind - and perhaps in all of philosophy.

(2)  Although one may not be able, at present, to offer a satisfactory account of consciousness, or of the idea of the mind's being immediately presented with something, if one considers any experience that one has, the idea that the mere fact that one is having that experience serves to justify certain beliefs about that experience has great intuitive appeal.

(3)  Bonjour explicitly contends that the response that I have just made to his attack upon the idea of givenness is not satisfactory:
 

"Third.  Notice carefully that the problem raised here with respect to givenism is a logical problem (in a broad sense of 'logical').  Thus it would be a mistake to think that it can be solved simply by indicating some sort of state which seems intuitively to have the appropriate sorts of characteristics; the problem is to understand how it is possible for any state to have those characteristics."  (A Critique of Foundationalism, Pojman's Anthology, page 222)


        But is Bonjour right here?  The foundationalist points to the state of being aware that one's own present experience has, say, the property of being of the tingling sort, and claims that the belief that one is now experiencing a tingling sensation - which is part of that state of awareness - is justified simply by being part of such a state of awareness.  Bonjour contends that there is a argument of a broadly 'logical' sort that shows that this is not possible.  But Bonjour's argument involves the crucial claim that a propositional claim can only be justified by appealing to another propositional claim, and, in the present context, that contention appears to be simply question-begging.  Awareness of qualities of one's present experiences certainly seems to be a state that justifies a given belief, and that does so without appealing to other justified beliefs as evidence, and given that this is so, it seems reasonable to conclude that what Bonjour claims is impossible is in fact possible.

(4)  This is not to say that there is nothing more that needs to be done here.  The notion of consciousness, or of 'immediate', or 'direct' awareness of a property, is a notion that one would really like to be able to analyze.  But, as I noted in comment (1), the problem of consciousness has proven quite intractable.  The difficulty posed by the problem of consciousness gives one no reason for concluding, however, that the notion of direct awareness does not make any sense.

7.  Possible Objections to Coherentism

Objection 1:  The Existence of Alternative, Equally Coherent Systems of Beliefs

        This parallels the objection that was set out earlier in connection with coherence approaches to truth.  There, the objection seems decisive.  Coherentists maintain that when one switches to the case of coherence approaches to justified belief, the objection loses its force.   One can, it is suggested, insist that consideration be restricted to something like beliefs that people actually have, and ignore systems of beliefs that are merely potential.

        Is this move convincing?  I can't see that it is.  For if we imagine technological advances that would enable a person to have his or her beliefs altered -  including present memory beliefs - and if it is really coherence that makes for justification, then why wouldn't it be reasonable to have one's memories changed in quite dramatic ways if doing so resulted in a more coherent system of beliefs?  Yet surely the idea of a potentially wholesale alteration of one's present beliefs in order to have a more coherent system of beliefs is very dubious, to say the least.  For many  of one's beliefs, surely, reflect the actual impact of the world upon one, and thus play a crucial role in ensuring a measure of correspondence between what one believes and the way the world really is.

Objection 2:  How Does Coherence Connect Up with Truth?

        Mightn't the set of one's beliefs be just a grand fairy tale?  That is to say, if truth is a matter of correspondence, not of coherence, then what reason is there for believing that because someone's beliefs constitute a harmonious, mutually supporting set, that they are likely to correspond to the way that the world really is?  But if the fact that certain beliefs are coherent does not make it more likely that they will be true, then how can a coherence account of justification possibly be satisfactory?

        Larry Bonjour sketches an answer to this objection in his article, "Holistic Coherentism", the thrust of which seems to be that the world gives rise to one's observational beliefs, and it is this causal connection that makes it likely that coherent beliefs will, at least over the long haul, be true.  But it is unclear whether Bonjour is appealing here to the existence of an actual causal connection, or to a belief, within a coherent system of beliefs, that there is such a causal connection.  If it is the mere existence of such a connection that is crucial, then it would seem that Bonjour is lapsing into an externalist account of justification - according to which there can be factors that are crucial to the justification of a given belief, but of which one has no awareness.  On the other hand, if it is just the belief that there is such a causal connection, and the coherence of that belief with one's other beliefs, then it seems that one is back with the grand fairy-tale problem, and there is no reason for thinking that a coherent set of beliefs is likely to be true.

Objection 3:  Shouldn't Observational Beliefs Be Assigned a Special Place?

        A foundationalist account of the justification of belief is appealing, I would suggest, for two main reasons.  First, there is the epistemic regress argument discussed earlier, the thrust of which was that there does not seem to be any satisfactory alternative to the idea that all inferentially justified beliefs must be justified, ultimately, on the basis of beliefs that are justified, but not justified on the basis of evidence.  In the present context, the thing to notice about the epistemic regress argument is that it does not provide any indication of what the content of non-inferentially justified beliefs might be.  In this respect, it contrasts sharply with a second way in which one might support a foundationalist approach, namely, by claiming that there are some beliefs that it is reasonable to accept even if one cannot offer any evidence in support of them.  Among the most plausible candidates are certain beliefs about one's own present experience - such as the belief that one's own present experiences involve different properties, or that parts of one's visual field resemble one another quite closely, of that several parts of one's visual field are red, etc.

        This second line of support for a foundationalist approach gives rise, accordingly, to the following question.  Don't beliefs about one's own present experiences have to be assigned a special epistemic position?  And if this is so, then isn't a coherentist approach unsatisfactory, for doesn't it fail to do so?

Comment

        Larry Bonjour offers an answer to this objection, but his answer involves the same idea as that mentioned in connection with the previous objection.

Objection 4:  Direct Acquaintance and Semantically Basic Terms

        An objection that is closely related to the preceding one focuses upon the importance of observational beliefs in fixing the meaning of semantically basic terms - that is, those terms with which analysis starts.  Here the idea is that analysis should start with terms that pick out properties or relations with which one can be directly acquainted.  But if there are properties and/or relations with which one can be directly acquainted, is it not plausible that such direct acquaintance makes it the case that one is justified in believing that the property or relation in question exists, and is instantiated in a given particular, or ordered set of particulars?

        In short, the objection is that rejection of the idea that there are epistemically basic beliefs appears to commit one to the rejection, as well, of the idea that there are semantically basic terms with which analysis can, and must, start.

Objection 5:  Coherence Is Too Easily Achieved

        This objection, which is set out by Richard Fumerton in his article, "A Critique of Coherentism", runs as follows.  First, the coherentist generally sets out his or her position in terms of relations of support.  The reason for doing so, Fumerton suggests, may be that the coherentist thinks that the stronger relations of entailment would be too hard to come by.  But, secondly, is it true that relations of entailment are hard to come by?  Fumerton argues that they are not.  His argument is as follows:

(1)  Let p and q be any two unrelated propositions.  For example:

p   =   There are cars in the world

q   =   There is a golden teacup in orbit around Venus

(2)  Suppose that the only beliefs that Bruce accepts are the belief that p and the belief that q.  Not a very exciting set of beliefs, but perhaps Bruce is a cautious believer.  We ask Bruce, however, to consider accepting two other beliefs:

r   =   Either there are cars in the world, or else it is not the case that there is a golden teacup in orbit around Venus

s   =   Either there is a golden teacup in orbit around Venus, or else it is not the case that there are cars in the world.

Since r   =  p  or  not q, r cannot be false if p is true.  Similarly, since s  =  q  or  not p, s cannot be false if q is true.  So, since Bruce already believes p and q, he has good reason also to accept both r and s

(3)  Now that Bruce believes the following four propositions - p, q, r, and s - he has a system of beliefs that, though small, displays striking coherence.  For we have the following relationships:

(a)  p entails r

(b)  q entails s

(c)  p together with s entails q

(d)  q together with r entails p.

So every belief in the system of beliefs is either entailed by one of the other beliefs, or by a combination of two of the other beliefs.

        The thrust of Fumerton's argument, accordingly, is that given that any set of two or more beliefs can be extended into a highly coherent system simply by adding beliefs that are logically entailed by beliefs that are already in the set, coherence is surely not a good reason for thinking that a set of beliefs is justified.  For then anyone's beliefs would qualify as justified provided they make some elementary logical inferences.

Comment

        This is an interesting and important argument.  It does show at the very least, I believe, that the coherentist needs a very different account of coherence if coherentism is to be acceptable.  But if relations of mutual support won't do, what will be the key idea in such a revised account?  Something along the lines of the idea of explanatory relevance would seem to be the most plausible answer.

Objection 6:  Another Regress

        This objection, which is also set out by Richard Fumerton in his article, "A Critique of Coherentism", may be put as follows:

(1)  Suppose that my beliefs are beautifully coherent.  Am I then justified in accepting the propositions in question?

(2)  Answer:  No, because though my beliefs are beautifully coherent, I may not believe that they are, or I may believe that, but not be justified in doing so.

(3)  So in addition to my beliefs being beautifully coherent, I have to have certain "meta-beliefs", to the effect that I have certain beliefs, and that they are coherent.  Moreover, those meta-beliefs must be justified.  But on the coherentist approach, those meta-beliefs will be justified only if they are coherent.

(4)  But it is not enough that those meta-beliefs be coherent.  For I might not believe that I have any such beliefs, or I might not believe that they are coherent.  Or I might believe that, but not be justified in doing so.

(5)  So I now have to have meta-meta-beliefs, and they have to be coherent.

(6)  This process never stops.  So a coherentist approach to justification generates an infinite regress of its own - and one that surely entails that no belief is ever justified if the coherentist approach is correct.

Schematically:

1.  According to the coherentist approach, B is justified only if it belongs to a coherent set of beliefs, S, that I accept.

2.  But if one adopts an internalist view of justification - according to which the only factors that can justify a belief for a person are factors that the person is aware of - then B is justified only if I believe that S is a coherent set of beliefs to which B belongs, and all of which I accept.  Call this meta-belief B1.

3.  But my belief B would not be justified if the meta-belief B1 were not justified.

4.  Applying the coherentist approach to B1, however, will, in precisely parallel fashion, generate a meta-meta-belief B2 which is such that I am not justified in accepting B1 unless I am justified in accepting B2.

5.  Because of the nature of the new beliefs that are generated - namely, there is, at every step, a deeper embedding within a "belief operator", one will never come back to earlier beliefs in the sequence.  So the sequence generated cannot be any sort of circle: it must be an infinite regress that involves, at every step, some new belief.

6.  Coherentism leads, according, to a vicious infinite regress.  So if coherentism were correct, there would be no way of avoiding skepticism.

Comment

        Might one be able to get around this objection by the following strategy?

(1)  Let S be the set of all of A's beliefs.

(2)  Suppose that S is a very coherent set, and that it contains the following beliefs:

C0: S is a coherent set of beliefs.

C1: A believes that S is a coherent set of beliefs.

C2: A believes that A believes that S is a coherent set of beliefs.

Etc., for C3, C4, ... Cn, ...  !

(3)  Then S will be such that A can show, along coherentist lines, that any belief in S is justified.

(4)  The cost of this maneuver is that, first, A has an infinite number of beliefs of a certain sort - C0, C1, C2, ... etc. - and that seems problematic in the case of humans.  Secondly, self-reference is involved in the beliefs in question, and since self-reference is known to generate various paradoxes, many philosophers think that self-reference should not be allowed.

Objection 7:  Consistency is Not Even A Necessary Condition for Rational Beliefs.

        This objection is also set out by Richard Fumerton in his article, "A Critique of Coherentism".  It turns upon a consideration of the lottery case - sometimes referred to as "the lottery paradox".  Thus, suppose that there is a lottery in which there are 100 tickets, and the draw is a random one.  Then it would seem that one is justified in believing that ticket 1 will not be the winning ticket, since the chances against it are 99 to 1.  But similarly, one is also justified in believing that ticket 2 will not be the winning ticket, and so on for every ticket.  So, for every ticket n, one is justified in believing that ticket n will not be the winning ticket.  But the resulting 100 rational beliefs, taken together, entail that no ticket will be the winning ticket.  Yet one is surely justified in believing that one of the tickets will win.  Conclusion: There is a set, containing 101 beliefs, such that it is logically impossible for all 101 beliefs to be true, and yet one is nevertheless justified in accepting all 101 beliefs.  Therefore one is sometimes justified in accepting inconsistent beliefs.

Comments

1.  One response is to say that one has to shift from talking about beliefs simpliciter to talking about degrees of assent to different propositions, and then introduce an idea that deals with the consistency of degrees of assent to different propositions.

2.  Alternatively, one can take the view that it is a mistake to believe that ticket 1 will not be the winning ticket: what one should believe, rather, is that the probability that ticket 1 will win is only 1 in 100.  If this is done, then the 101 beliefs in question are not mutually inconsistent.

Objection 8:  The Impossibility of "Pooling Evidence" to Resolve Disagreements

        Mightn't different people accept different beliefs that formed equally coherent sets, but which were incompatible with one another?  (Religious beliefs as a common, proposed illustration.)  On a foundationalist view, there would, presumably, be a way of resolving such disagreements, at least in principle, since people could, so to speak, pool their evidence, and determine what beliefs were justified in the light of all of the evidence.  But is there any way of resolving the disagreement, even in principle, on a coherentist approach?  Perhaps one could pool all of the beliefs?  But, in the first place, the result will presumably be an inconsistent set of beliefs.  (Contrast here the situation in the case where one pools evidence.  Here there may be inconsistency, given certain views concerning what sorts of things one can have noninferential knowledge of.  But on other views concerning noninferential knowledge, the pooling together will not lead to any inconsistency).  Secondly, there is another difficulty - the problem, namely, of different ways of pruning the resulting set of beliefs to get a coherent one.

        Moreover, couldn't there be cases where one could cut back to a set of mutually supporting beliefs in two or more very different ways?  But if so, which would be justified?

Objection 9:  The Possibility of Evidentially Isolated, Justified Beliefs

        Finally, there is an objection that consists simply of one of the two arguments offered in support of foundationalism, and the thrust of which was that it seems that I might very well be justified in believing that I am now experiencing a tingling sensation even if, as a matter of fact, I have no other beliefs that would provide evidence for that belief.  So it seems that one can have beliefs that are non-inferentially justified.

        A slightly more dramatic version of that argument - as was also noted earlier - is one where a person is suffering from complete amnesia, and is in a situation where the only experience that he or she is having is a tingling sensation.  Then the belief in question might very well be necessarily isolated, evidentially, since the person might not have, at that time, any other beliefs at all.  Yet even if that were so, wouldn't the belief still be a justified one?  If so, then non-inferentially justified beliefs must be possible.