PHIL 250 Lecture 8: Empiricist Foundationalism and Other Minds
10 Mar 2017
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Note, however, that not all logical positivists were foundationalists (e. g. neurath) and not all foundationalists were positivists. We briefly considered a more general, and purely epistemological, reason for this preoccupation with the direct deliverances of the senses, which has nothing to do with vp (here i am drawing on ch. 4 of jonathan dancy"s book, It is natural to say that we justify beliefs by appeal to other beliefs. Some beliefs form evidence for others: we show that a belief, b, is justified by showing how it can be inferred from other beliefs, b2-bn. But now there is a threat of a regress, for b2-bn will serve to justify b, only if b2-bn are themselves justified. If b2-bn are to be justified by appeal to further beliefs, then those further beliefs will have to be justified by appeal to yet further beliefs, and so on. This regress is vicious: unless it is stopped no beliefs will be justified.
