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Foundationalism
According to foundationalism, justified beliefs are structured like a building: they are divided into a foundation and a superstructure, where the former supports the latter. The underlying beliefs are basic. Beliefs related to the superstructure are non-basic, they are justified by justified beliefs in the foundation. However, for a foundationalism approach to be plausible, it must answer two questions. First, what exactly justifies basic beliefs, and secondly, how do basic beliefs justify non-basic ones.
According to the foundations of foundationalism, the subjects basic beliefs are made up of introspective beliefs about his own mental states, of which sensory experience is a subset. Other mental states about which the subject may have basic beliefs include headache, fatigue, pleasure, the desire for a cup of coffee (Code 77). Beliefs about external objects, however, are not, and cannot be, basic beliefs, since such beliefs are incapable of possessing the epistemic privilege required for the status of a basic belief.
Coherentism
Foundationalism claims that knowledge and justification are built like a building, which has a superstructure and a foundation on which it rests. According to coherentism, this metaphor is misleading. Knowledge and justification are structured like a network, where the strength of a particular area depends on the strength of the surrounding areas. Coherentists thus deny that there are any underlying beliefs (Code 215). As we saw in the last section, there are two ways to understand basicity. Accordingly, there are two ways to interpret coherentism: as a denial of doxastic basicity, or as a denial of epistemic basicity. One problem for explanatory coherentism is to explain in non-epistemic terms why a preferred explanation is indeed better than competing explanations.
Explanatory coherence is supposed to explain where justification comes from. He cannot do this if he explains the difference between a better and a worse explanation using the difference between a justified and an unjustified belief. If explanatory coherentism operated in this way, there would be a circle in the explanation, and hence an uninformative understanding of justification (Code 196). Therefore, the challenge for the coherentism of explanations is to give such an understanding of the advantage of one explanation over another, which does not use the concept of justification.
Similarities of Theories
There is a question related to the fact that the experience of perception is at the same time a source for justification. One answer to this conundrum can be seen as a compromise position, since it is conceived as an agreement between foundationalism and its rival, coherentism. It is important to emphasize that both philosophical directions are traditional approaches to the theory of justification of knowledge. They are normative representations of the rules by virtue of which propositions must be accepted or rejected, or regarded as indeterminate. According to foundationalism, not every one of the reasons for our beliefs needs to be supported by any other, because there are basic, basic reasons that have no need for further support (Code 191). At the same time, in coherentism, the process of giving reasons may not contain any reason that is not supported by another reason, but the number of reasons is not infinite (Code 44). Thus, beliefs mutually support each othera belief justifies its coherence with other beliefs, and the standards of what constitutes coherence, as in a coherent theory of truth, belong directly to the theory itself.
Theory Differences
The difference between the positions of foundationalism and coherentism demonstrates a variable aspect the content of the concept justification . In the case of foundationalism, justification provides a guarantee of the truth of justified beliefs on the basis of their inferential relation to self-justified basic beliefs, which are a reliable foundation of knowledge. In the case of coherentism, justification is carried out by establishing a coherence relation, which can be interpreted holistically or relationally. In the first situation, the relation between the beliefs that mutually agree and reinforce each other within the framework of an integral system. In the second, coherence is interpreted as a relationship between the prerequisite system and substantiated beliefs (Code 180). The ideas have been evaluated and selected on the basis of the accepting and preferential structures of the prerequisite system, complicating the experience of reasonable acceptance of beliefs converted into knowledge.
Plausibility
As a result of the analysis of both approaches to justification theory, coherentism is the preferred theory due to its applicability in practice and provability. Some varieties of coherentism suggest that among the elements between which there is a relationship of coherence, there must be not only beliefs, but also between sense data of perception. Both should form a single system, the elements of which mutually substantiate each other. This is indeed the case, since not every belief must be proven from the outside, it is enough to interact with other points properly, which will be indirect evidence. In general, the approach of proving from the opposite, or proving through related beliefs, is common in science, which has shown its worth.
The main reproach that proponents of coherentism often hear is that of the vicious circle they allow within the structure of justified beliefs. However, not every circle in justification is vicious and it is possible that a circular justification is of some value if it provides the best way to understand the relationship that exists between beliefs. From the point of view of coherentism, a belief is because it is consistent with other beliefs, but not with what is happening in the world, and coherentism offers nothing that could provide a connection between beliefs and the world.
Work Cited
Code, Lorraine. (2020). Epistemic Responsibility. State University of New York Press.
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