Epistemological fundamentalism

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Epistemological fundamentalism (sometimes also fundamentalism ; from the English foundationalism ) has been called a certain type of epistemological theories since the mid-1960s , i.e. of theories about the nature and the creation of knowledge, justification and related problem contexts. According to epistemological fundamentalism, there are so-called basic beliefs . They are not justified by further beliefs. Conversely, they serve as the foundation for justifying other beliefs.

Variants of epistemological fundamentalism

Such epistemological fundamentalism is ascribed to many classics, including, for example, Aristotle . In the modern discussion, positions of this kind were represented, for example, by Roderick Chisholm (in his major work published in 1966) and already referred to as fundamentalism.

So that the basic beliefs do not simply appear as arbitrary ("dogmatic") assumptions, they must, according to a widespread demand, be justified themselves. One possibility is to understand basic beliefs as being directly justified by perceptions . For example, the perception that we see Karl sitting in the library might justify the basic belief that Karl is actually sitting in the library. Perceptions, it seems at first glance, can justify beliefs without needing justification themselves, because one has perceptions or one does not have them. You cannot justify it, it is not sensible to have it. At most one can explain it. Therefore, perceptions cannot justify our beliefs. Perceptions can only be used to explain our beliefs. Either basic beliefs are justified by other beliefs, which does not stop the threat of recourse ( cf.Münchhausen Trilemma ), or something other than beliefs is used that does not need to be justified, but which does not justify the basic beliefs.

Since basic beliefs cannot be justified by anything other than beliefs, the only possibility that remains is that they are self-justifying. For example, an attempt is made to bring basic beliefs as close as possible to perception. In the event that we see Karl in the library, the basic belief would be that it seems to us that Karl is sitting in the library. With that we would definitely be right with regard to the conviction, even if it later turns out that it was a mistake because it was not Karl but Friedrich. Such “perceptual” convictions , however, are devoid of content, and where an error is impossible in any case, there is nothing left to be right about. At least they don't say much about reality. Either the basic beliefs are self-justifying and without empirical content, or they have empirical content and cannot be viewed as fundamental. Fundamentalism does not seem to be a way out of the trilemma .

Alvin Plantinga distinguishes between two forms of classical fundamentalism: ancient and medieval fundamentalism see a proposition as justifiably basic if it is either evident [“self-evident”] or sensually evident [“evident to the senses”]. For modern fundamentalism, propositions are justifiably basic when they are either evident [“self-evident”] or uncorrectable.

Critique of epistemological fundamentalism

Plantinga argues that the criteria for basality used by epistemological fundamentalists are incoherent in a self-referential way, since the conditions must also be met by the proposition . For example, it is difficult to justify why the statement "For every proposition A and every person S: A is justifiably basal for S if and only if A is uncorrectable or evident for S" is either uncorrectable or evident - and therefore justifiably basal - could be.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Ernst: Introduction to the theory of knowledge . WBG, Darmstadt 2007, Chapter 6.2 Empirical Foundations of Knowledge ?, pp. 85–90.
  2. ↑ Alvin Plantinga: “Is belief in God justifiably basic?” In: Christoph Jäger (Ed.): Analytische Religionsphilosophie, Paderborn etc. 1998, pp. 317-330.