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Foundationalism for Modest Infi nitists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John Turri
John Turri*
Affiliation:
Huron University College, London, ON, N6G 5R7
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Extract

We find two main contemporary arguments for the infinitist theory of epistemic justification (‘infinitism’ for short): the regress argument (Klein 1999, 2005) and the features argument (Fantl 2003). I've addressed the former elsewhere (Turri 2009a). Here I address the latter.

Jeremy Fantl argues that infinitism outshines foundationalism because infinitism alone can explain two of epistemic justification's crucial features, namely, that it comes in degrees and can be complete. This paper demonstrates foundationalism's ample resources for explaining both features.

Section II clarifies the debate's key terms. Section III recounts how infinitism explains the two crucial features. Section IV presents Fantl's argument that foundationalism cannot explain the two crucial features. Section V explains how foundationalism can explain the two crucial features. Section VI sums up.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 275 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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References

Fantl, Jeremy. 2003. ‘Modest Infinitism.’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (2003) 537–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath, Matthew. 2002. ‘Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification.’ The Philosophical Review 111 (2002) 67–94.Google Scholar
Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath, Matthew. 2007. ‘On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2007) 558–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Peter. 1999. ‘Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons.’ Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999) 297–325.Google Scholar
Klein, Peter. 2005. ‘Infinitism Is the Solution to the Regress Problem.’ In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Priest, Graham. 2001. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turri, John. 2009a. ‘On the Regress Argument for Infinitism.’ Synthese 166 (2009) 157–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turri, John. 2009b. ‘An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification.’ Dialectica 63 (2009) 209–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar