‘Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?’ - Bonjour Bonjour criticizes all forms of epistemological foundationalism. He describes the various forms of foundationalism and the main argument surrounding them as well as the justification regress problem - Justification of a belief is justified by another belief which must also be justified...etc. This epistemic regress gives the foundationalist four options: (i) The regress ends with beliefs that have no justification. (No good because unjustified arbitrary beliefs cannot justify beliefs.) (ii) The regress is infinite (No good because there is no justification.) (iii) The regress is circular (A form of coherence justification but it is no good because circular justification is not justification.) (iv) The regress ends with beliefs that are justified without the justification of other beliefs. The Foundationalist argues for (iv) because all other options are no good. Bonjour disagrees, (iv) does not solve the regress of justification problem. He argues against the claim that some empirical beliefs are justified intrinsicall...
In this book, many fallacious quotations were used to support Skousen’s viewpoints. These quotations were blindly accepted due to the attached name without proper insight into the context of the quotation. It seemed as if Skousen frequently misinterpreted his sources purposely to authenticate his argument, often without proper justification or a well-reasoned argument. The audience was ultimately misled to believe flimsy assertions with unproven conclusions; Skousen achieved this by supporting axioms that will be widely accepted and by jumping to conclusions with which we have
The thesis of the Epilogue comes from an unorthodox definition of faith and belief. Belief in the Cartesian World refers to something that has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The key term in this definition
Hick’s pluralistic theory faces one major difficulty though, the contradicting claims that each different religions makes. How can all major religions be responses of the same ultimate reality when they contradict one another? For a pluralistic view to be plausible, the hypothesis has to sufficiently explain how religions can make incompatible claims while at the same time be responses of the same ultimate reality.
Foundationalism addresses the infinite regress problem in the following way: if person O is to be justified in having belief X, X must be justified by a further belief Y, which must inferentially justify belief X. Furthermore, Y must be justified by another belief, Z. Instead of following this line infinitely, the foundationalist argues that eventually there must be a foundational belief that is self-justified and capable of justifying any belief that relies on it in turn for its own justification. Accordingly, as an example, belief Z must be able to justify itself without a belief Z1, and be able to justify belief Y at the same time. Thus, inferential justification must be possible for non-foundational beliefs; noninferential justification must also be possible as well. How one arrives at noninferentially justified beliefs is one of the biggest problems for the foundationalist.
In this paper I will present an argument I have found in the Second Analogy for the necessity of presupposing the causal determination of each event. I will begin by briefly describing Robert Paul W...
In his attempt to resolve this third antinomy, Henry Allison begins by arguing that the thesis demands an unconditioned causality.6
2. The Roman Catholic church did its best to regulate the belief of Catholic Christians from the early church to the Reformation, labeling some beliefs orthodox and some heretical. Discuss at least two examples of instances before 1500 in which the church attempted to control belief and then discuss the career of Martin Luther. Why was Luther able to successfully break with the church when previous dissenters were not? Be sure to support your answer with evidence from our class sources.
Furthermore, another theory in this debate according to Harris and Shaw (2000) is that the UCR is primaril...
This essay attempts to capitalize on Goldman 's “What is justified belief?” to form an opinion about his ideas. Goldman makes a break from traditional views of knowledge to form a theory of externalism. He gives the reader a new point of view for observing the relationship between knowledge and justification. The following passage will weed out some important aspects of his theory and how they relate to his theory as a whole.
Popper claims basic statements are not justified by experience, but accepted by choice or convention. This claim is argued through a rejection of ‘psychologism’ and inductivism. According to Popper, scientific theory can be seen the fog above a swamp full of basic statements; the acceptance of a theory comes from an evaluation of basic statements and the conscious decision to accept or reject the theory. Popper comes to this conclusion after considering the problem of psychologism, distinguishing science from non-science, examining the falsification of theories and their testability, and then comparing perceptual experience and basic statements to illustrate how we come to form and accept scientific theory as empirical. Poppers arguments are
Hollis, M., & Lukes, S. (1982). Apparently Irrational Beliefs.Rationality and relativism (pp. 149-180). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
...s beliefs are not reflected in their conduct. As a result, people do not truly understand the doctrines they hold dear, and their misunderstanding leads to serious mistakes.
Nash, Ronald H., (1999). Life‘s ultimate questions: an introduction to philosophy, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530, page 284, quoting Arthur Holmes, “ The Justification of World View Beliefs”
Robinson, R. R. (1994). Some methodological approaches to the unexplained points. Philosophy 2B/3B (pp. 27-34). Melbourne: La Trobe University.
Some of the objections, such as the ones made by Edmund Gettier, claim that three conditions are not nearly enough to justify a true belief, and that at the very least a fourth must be added. Gettier presents a very valid criticism of the JTB theory of knowledge, and his counter examples highlight flaws in the JTB theory that make it an inadequate theory of knowledge. Gettier claims takes an issue with the third part of the JTB theory, which states that proposition P must be true. Gettier makes the interesting observation that person S may very well be justified in believing in proposition P even if P is false