Three Philosophical Topics - 1A

However, before I begin I have to regrettably inform my opponent and the audience that it seems I haven't fully defined my position on foundationalism. Not only am I modern foundationalist, but also an externalist one. I forgot to include the distinction of whether or not I am an internalist or an externalist, so to choose one would seem somewhat arbitrary and unfair on my part (since I can simply choose one that evades my opponent's argument). So in return, I will simply force myself to defend internalist foundationalism since this is what my opponent argues against with the Laurence BonJour objection. I will defeat this objection via two ways. First, I will demonstrate that there is a way out of this horned dilemma. Then, I will show that if this objection is taken to be true, it will be too strong for it's own good. ==================== Summary of the Bonjour objection ==================== Bonjour's objection seems to place any attempt to justify internalist foundationalism at a horned dilemma. It seems that for the foundationalist that justifying a basic belief is inherently contradictory, as any attempt to infer a reason in justification for a basic belief violates it's very precepts. Even if we are to go along with the assumption of strong access internalism, I'd argue that there is a way to do this. As my opponent has said, a common way (and according to her, the only way) to justify a belief is to infer that it's feature is found in some other belief that seems to be highly likely to be true - she presented this in her syllogism. However, I will show that there is a way to be justified about a belief p without having inferential warrant for p. ==================== Escape from the Bonjour objection ==================== Interestingly enough, my defense from this objection will take inspiration from Bonjour himself - he, who is a noted philosopher of epistemology who in his earlier years attacked internalist foundationalism has actually recently joined the ranks of foundationalists! He argues for what he calls "The Reasons-Warrant Principle (RW): A proposition p has warrant for a subject S only if S is in cognitive possession of a reason why p is likely to be true[1]. " Bonjour makes a convincing case for how being in cognitive possession of a reason why an experiential proposition is likely to be true will not require having inferential warrant for the proposition. To quote him, he summarizes this belief: "such a built in awareness of sensory content is thus also apparently available to justify genuinely foundational beliefs […]. Thus if I have the belief that, e. g. , my present visual experience includes a red, square patch in the approximate middle of my visual field, and if my constitutive or built-in awareness of the content of my actual conscious visual experience includes an awareness of such an element, then this latter awareness seems to provide a clear and compelling reason for thinking that the belief is true. [1]" It is BonJour's alternative model of cognitive possession of reasons that allows for the validity of internalist foundationalism. He bypasses the horns of the dilemma by stating that the awareness does not need to be, and in fact cannot be, justified. ==================== Problems with the Bonjour objection's presupposition of strong access internalism ==================== Another problem with utilizing this objection is that if we are to accept it's presupposition of strong access internalism, which "argues that a feature of a belief or epistemic situation that makes a belief noninferentially justified must be a feature to which we have actual or potential access[2]", then we come across the problem of it being too strong for it's own good. As has been noted, "given the structure of the argument it should become evident that the coherence theory (and any other theory) would be equally vulnerable to the argument. Just replace "X" with some complicated description of beliefs cohering with each other[2]. " This means that if we are to accept this objection, then we have to submit to the fact that NO THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION can be held accountable. The problem with this conclusion is that it's self-defeating; such a admittance would result in abandoning oneself from any possible rational discourse. A similar example to this would be the position of a radical epistemological skeptic - one who believes knowledge is impossible. However, one can tell already that this is a self-defeating position (to claim knowledge is impossible is ITSELF a claim). In fact, the entire struggle of epistemology is focused on defeating radical skepticism. In summary, if we are to accept this objection then we have to accept the abandonment of all epistemological attempts at a theory of justification, given in virtue of how the objection is used. ==================== Conclusion ==================== My opponent makes a good effort, but ultimately her crumble in virtue of not only be unsuccessful in locking down it's horned dilemma, but of the objection itself being too strong if accepted. ---References--- 1. . http://www.ucl.ac.uk... 2. . http://plato.stanford.edu...