PHI 3170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Descriptive Knowledge, Foundationalism, Atomism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 3170
• Professor: Daniel Kofman

Document Summary

Any view of how our beliefs hang together is a view of skepticism how they are justified together. When we say our beliefs hang together, it means they have a justificatory relation. Foundationalism is an answer to this relation. What foundationalism claims and its approach to skepticism: two classical skeptical arguments: argument from error, and arguments from regress. Problem infinite regress ultimate answer : foundationalism: there is some ultimate or basic level of beliefs which are justified non- inferentially. Aristotle: two kinds of justified beliefs: self-evident and evidently inferred. Foundationalism especially motivated to answer arguments from regress: there is a stopping point. But also typically takes into account the argument from err, by making phenomenal experience the stopping point. Thus, not: it looks like there" a brown table, where looks like" implies a view of how things out there actually are, but: i am having the sensation of brownness, of a certain shape and surface texture.