Foundationalism is false; after all, foundational beliefs are arbitrary, they do not solve the epistemic regress problem, and they cannot exist withoutother (justified) beliefs. Or so some people say. In this essay, we assess some arguments based on such claims, arguments suggested in recent work by Peter Klein and Ernest Sosa.

There is... something both intellectually and socially unresponsive in the appeal to self-evidence upon controverted issues. Over the last two decades philosophers have focused increasingly on the role of society and practices in shaping practical normativity.3 Contemporary moral and political philosophy remains fundamentally committed to individualistic and causal approaches to normativity, but a contrary trend has taken root—at least since Wittgenstein’s insights regarding the role of context, practices, and uses—with increasing appeals made to the “social” and to “practice” in reaction (...) to the over-individualistic and idealistic trends characterizing mainstream philosophy, especially in the.. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of modest foundationalism in relation to some important criteria of epistemic dependence. The paper distinguishes between causal and epistemic dependence and indicates how each might be related to reasons. Four kinds of reasons are also distinguished: reasons to believe, reasons one has for believing, reasons for which one believes, and reasons why one believes. In the light of all these distinctions, epistemic dependence is contrasted with defeasibility, and it is argued that modest foundationalism is not (...) committed to criteria of epistemic dependence on which foundational beliefs are indefeasible. Modest foundationalism is contrasted with coherentism and is shown to be hospitable to a causal criterion of epistemic dependence, compatible with reliabilism, and neutral with respect to skepticism. (shrink)

Immediate knowledge is here construed as true belief that does not owe its status as knowledge to support by other knowledge (or justified belief) of the same subject. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a criticism of attempts to show the impossibility of immediate knowledge. I concentrate on attempts by Wilfrid Sellars and Laurence Bonjour to show that putative immediate knowledge really depends on higher-level knowledge or justified belief about the status of the beliefs involved in the putative (...) immediate knowledge. It is concluded that their arguments are lacking in cogency. (shrink)