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Foundations for Claiming Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Douglas Odegard
Douglas Odegard*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, CanadaN1G 2W1
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Extract

One reasonably familiar argument for epistemological scepticism maintains that knowledge requires foundations and that we rarely, if ever, have such foundations. The conclusion of this argument is that we rarely, if ever, have knowledge. A second, less ambitious sceptical argument is that philosophers cannot justifiably say that they have knowledge unless their statement is based on foundations and that we never have such foundations. The conclusion of this argument is not that we never have knowledge, but that philosophers are never justified in saying that they have knowledge. The scepticism is Pyrrhonic, rather than Academic, and merely attempts to counter knowledge assertions, not establish that they are false. It tries to show that in most cases the best response we can give to ‘Do we have knowledge?’ is to remain indifferent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 613 - 633
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 See Alston, William P. ‘Two Types of Foundationalism,’ Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 165–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Contrast Bonjour, Laurence ‘Can Empirical Knowledge have a Foundation?’ American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978), 1–14.Google Scholar

2 See Klein, Peter D. Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1981)Google Scholar. I answer a number of criticisms in Knowledge and Scepticism (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and littlefield 1982).

3 See Ayer, A.J. Problem of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1956)Google Scholar and Malcolm, N. Knowledge and Certainty (Ithaca: Prentice-Hall 1963).Google Scholar

4 Contrast Lehrer, Keith Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1974),Google Scholar ch. 8, and Goldman, Alvin ‘What is Justified Belief?’ in Pappas, G. ed., Justification and Knowledge (Dordrecht: Reidel 1979), 1–23.Google Scholar

5 Alston, Contrast W. ‘Two Types of Foundationalism,’ Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 165–6,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’ Philosophical Studies 29 (1976), 293.

6 See Russell, Problems of Philosophy (OUP 1912), 19.Google Scholar

7 Compare Kyburg, H. Jr., ‘Conjunctivitis,’ in Swain, M. ed., Induction, Acceptance and Rational Belief (Dordrecht: Reidel 1970), 55–82,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Klein, P. Certainty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1981), 190–201.Google Scholar