Doctrine that knowledge must have foundations; that is, if we are to know anything at all there must be some things that we can know incorrigibly, so that it is impossible – or perhaps does not even make sense – for us to be mistaken.
The usual candidates for such knowledge have been facts about the immediate data of the senses or of introspection, such as what colors, tastes, and so on, are currently present to us, or what state of feeling or state of mind we are in.
But probably the most famous foundationalist statement has been that of Rene Descartes (1596-1650): ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’). One objection to foundationalism is that it is hard to make knowledge incorrigible without constricting it so far that it ceases to be knowledge at all (one can misclassify even one’s own immediate experiences).
Source:
R Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy (1641), especially Meditations 1 and 2
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context
- 2.2 Epistemology: Foundationalism & Coherentism
- 2.3 Wittgenstein, Anti-foundationalism, Technoscience and Philosophy of Education: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader Volume VIII (Educational Philosophy and Theory: Editor’s Choice)
- 2.4 Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism (Studies in Epistemology and Cognitive Theory)
- 2.5 Model Theory and the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice: Formalization without Foundationalism
- 2.6 Foundations without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-order Logic (Oxford Logic Guides)
- 2.7 The Ends of Philosophy: Pragmatism, Foundationalism and Postmodernism
- 2.8 Faith After Foundationalism: Plantinga-rorty-lindbeck-berger-- Critiques And Alternatives
- 2.9 Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context by Stanley J. Grenz (2001-03-08)
- 2.10 Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification: A Direct Realist and Conceptualist Theory of Foundationalism
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