World of Philosophy

SR No.: 007005
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
Publication Year: 2011
Total Pages: 1002
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 30 MB

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The foundations theory of knowledge presupposes that knowledge has a hierarchical structure, that it has a base and an apex, such that the base-level beliefs provide the foundations for the apex- level beliefs. These beliefs are taken to be self justified beliefs which provide the required epistemic stability to the system of knowledge. In a sense, it has been able to defend against the sceptical challenge by showing that there are directly evident beliefs regarding the external world.
There is a strong tradition in philosophy which holds that we start from knowledge of our own sensory states and build up from there. Descartes never questioned his beliefs about how things seemed to him at the time. John Locke perhaps set the classical pattern. He held that a person is directly aware only of the nature of his or her own ideas; everything else is known indirectly if at all. There is in fact a sceptical tendency in foundationalism of this sort, just because it leads us to see as problematic everything other than our knowledge of our own sensory states; it acknowledges the danger that we might be unable to construct the superstructure which the foundations are intended to carry.
Foundationalism offers such a structure in its assertion that the direction of justification is all one- way. The notion of inference from fixed points clearly embodies tie relevant asymmetries. Hence what is needed is a symmetrical relation which can be found in the notion of coherence, on which a more completely holistic theory is based. The coherentists point out that the knowledge- system works in the pattern of coherence rather than in a form of hierarchy. The idea of self-evident truths as was held by Descartes, Locke, Kant, Ayer and Russell has been a philosophical ideal rather than an actual situation in human knowledge. As Wittgenstein says “there are no self- evident truths in logic and mathematics since logical propositions are of equal status". Besides there are no foundational truths as such on which science rests, rather scientific knowledge functions as a system.
Among the contemporary analysts, W.V.O. Quine, Strawson and many others have argued against the idea of opinion that there are no privileged beliefs that can claim superiority over others. The search for self-justify ing truths in the classical epistemologists sense is based on a philosophical prejuidice. Quine has called classical epistemology “the first philosophy" that searches for the ideal norms of knowledge in a transcendental sense. In his view, this is the source of its failure because the ideal conditions of knowledge can be located only in the ongoing practice of knowledge and science. Therefore epistemology must bid good bye to its foundationalist and transcendental outlook and should give way to naturalization within the framework of human activity and forms of life. Quine rejects logical necessity in favour of natural necessity. He .
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