## 1. Regress Arguments for Foundationalism



A foundationally justified belief (henceforth simply:
'foundational belief') is one that does not depend on any
other beliefs for its justification. According to foundationalism, any
justified belief must either be foundational or depend for its
justification, ultimately, on foundational beliefs. Historically,
foundationalism was very widely, almost universally accepted.
Aristotle argued that "not all knowledge is demonstrative"
(i.e., not all knowledge is based on an argument from other things
known), and that some knowledge must be "independent of
demonstration" (*Posterior Analytics*, I.3). Many of the
medieval philosophers seemed in agreement with Aristotle, holding that
all knowledge must rest on "first principles" or
"self-evident truths" of some sort. More recently,
Descartes famously held that all knowledge must rest on a secure
foundation of indubitable truths (see the entry on
 Descartes's epistemology).
 Many other philosophers of the early modern period, including Locke,
Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, all seemed to accept
foundationalism as well, despite disagreeing about much else. When an
argument was implicitly or explicitly offered for the view, it was
most often some version of the now famous epistemic regress argument.
(See Aristotle's *Posterior Analytics*, I.3, for an early
version of this argument.) Before presenting the argument we should
discuss a principle it depends on.



Suppose I claim to be justified in believing that Fred will die
shortly and offer as my evidence that Fred has an untreatable and
serious form of cancer. Concerned, you ask me how I discovered that
Fred has cancer, and I respond that it is just a hunch on my part. As
soon as you become convinced (perhaps after further questioning) that
I have no good reason to suppose that Fred has cancer, you will
immediately conclude that my suspicion about Fred's condition
gives me no justification for believing that Fred will soon die.
Generalizing, one might suggest the following principle:



To be justified in believing *P* on the basis of *E* one
must be justified in believing *E*.



Now consider another example. Suppose I claim to be justified in
believing that Fred will die shortly and offer as my justification
that a certain line across his palm (his infamous
"lifeline") is short. Rightly skeptical, you wonder this
time what reason I have for believing that palm lines have anything
whatsoever to do with length of life. As soon as you become satisfied
that I have no justification for supposing that there is any kind of
probabilistic connection between the character of this line and
Fred's life, you will again reject my claim to have a justified
belief about Fred's impending demise. That suggests that we
might expand our principle to include a second clause.



**Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ):**
  

To be justified in believing *P* on the basis of *E* one
must be (1) justified in believing *E*, and (2) justified in
believing that *E* makes probable *P*.



One might note that in the palm reading example there actually is no
significant, objective probability between the length of Fred's
so-called "life-line" and his life span. Perhaps this is
why my belief that he is going to die soon is unjustified, and not
that I don't satisfy clause (2). Against this, the proponent of
PIJ might ask us to consider an amendment to the case. Suppose that,
surprisingly, it turns out that there *is* some objective,
significant probabilistic connection between "life-lines"
and the life spans of the individuals who have them, though again,
suppose that I do not have any justification for believing that there
is such a connection. This possibility seems coherent: the fact that
the relevant objective probabilistic relation obtains is not
sufficient for one to have justification for believing that it
obtains. But then, intuitively, I remain unjustified in believing that
Fred is going to die soon. Or consider the possibility that I believe
Fred will die because he has just ingested a lot of hemlock, and when
you ask me why I think hemlock would lead to death, I say that
I'm not sure, that it is just a hunch on my part that it is
going to kill him. Again, if I lack justification for believing that
hemlock is a deadly poison, or that it is likely to have this effect,
then intuitively, I lack justification for believing that Fred will
die soon. What more, then, is needed? A natural though controversial
suggestion is that one must satisfy something like clause (2).[3]



With the first clause of PIJ, one can present a relatively
straightforward epistemic regress argument for foundationalism. That
clause basically says that one cannot acquire justification for a
belief by inferring it from an unjustified belief. It also seems that
one cannot acquire justification for a belief by way of a circular,
inferential justification--one cannot rely even in part on a
proposition as a premise in an inference in support of that very
proposition. We seem left with two options: allow that some beliefs
have justification without depending on other beliefs, or suppose that
all justification is inferential. If all justification is inferential,
then for someone *S* to be justified in believing some
proposition *P*, *S* must be in a position to
legitimately infer it from some other proposition *E*1. But
*E*1 could justify *S* in believing *P* only if
*S* were justified in believing *E*1, and if all
justification were inferential, *S* would have to infer it (or
at least be able to infer it) from some other proposition justifiably
believed, *E*2, a proposition which in turn would have to be
inferred from some other proposition justifiably believed,
*E*3, and so on, *ad infinitum*. But finite beings
cannot complete an infinitely long chain of reasoning. And so, if all
justification were inferential, no one could be justified in believing
anything at all to any extent whatsoever.



This, however, is not yet an argument for foundationalism as much as
an argument against what we might call
"inferentialism"--the view that all justification is
inferential--for it leaves open the skeptical position that we
are not, and could not be, justified in believing anything at all,
whether by inference or otherwise. This most radical of all
skepticisms seems absurd (it entails that one couldn't even be
justified in believing it). But, strictly speaking, none of this shows
that we have non-inferential justification for any of our beliefs, or
even that non-inferential justification is possible. At best, it shows
only that, *if* justification is possible, or *if* we
are or could be justified in believing anything at all, *then*
that justification must take a foundationalist structure. The
epistemic regress argument *for foundationalism* thus needs an
additional premise, though one that all but the most radical skeptics
would accept: that epistemic justification is in principle possible
for beings like us.



If we accept the more controversial second clause of PIJ, the looming
regresses proliferate. Not only must *S* above be justified in
believing *E*1, *S* must also be justified in believing
that *E*1 makes likely *P*, a proposition he would have
to infer (if there are no foundations) from some other proposition
*F*1, which he would have to infer from *F*2, which he
would have to infer from *F*3, and so on *ad infinitum*.
But *S* would also need to be justified in believing that
*F*1 does in fact make likely that *E*1 makes likely
*P*, a proposition he would need to infer from some other
proposition *G*1, which he would need to infer from some other
proposition *G*2, and so on. And he would need to infer that
*G*1 does indeed make likely that *F*1 makes likely that
*E*1 makes likely *P*, and so on. Without
noninferentially justified beliefs, it would seem that we would need
to complete an infinite number of infinitely long chains of reasoning
in order to be justified in believing anything!



PIJ is controversial, especially its second clause. It is important to
note that either clause of the principle can be used by itself to
generate the allegedly vicious regress for the philosopher who rejects
foundations. It is the two clauses combined that are supposed to
present the anti-foundationalist with an infinite number of vicious
regresses. A number of philosophers (among them foundationalists)
would argue that the second clause of PIJ confuses levels of epistemic
questions. It is far too strong to require someone to have a justified
belief in a probabilistic connection between available evidence and
the conclusion reached on the basis of that evidence. Such a
requirement is at best plausible for having second-level
justification, justification for the epistemic belief that one has an
inferentially justified belief. In responding to a challenge presented
to one's having an inferentially justified belief in *P*
on the basis of *E*, one might find oneself searching for
justification to support the claim that *E* makes probable
*P*, but that is only because in the context of the challenge
one is trying to support or justify the claim that one has a justified
belief. A similar claim might be made with respect to clause (1) of
the principle, although it is more difficult to generate the
supporting intuition.



In any event, the careful foundationalist is certainly not
*confused* about level-distinctions. The foundationalist who
supports PIJ is claiming that a necessary condition for
someone's having an inferentially justified belief in *P*
based on *E* is that the person have both a justified belief in
*E* and a justified belief in the proposition that *E*
makes *P* probable. It is simply not enough that *E* is
true or that *E* does in fact make probable *P*. Our
original examples used to support PIJ would seem to reinforce that
conclusion. Even if there happened to be some bizarre connection
between palm lines and length of life, for example, the person who has
no reason to believe that such a connection exists has no
justification for conclusions reached about length of life based on
this anatomical feature of people. Similarly, even though there is in
fact a connection between ingesting hemlock and dying, a person who
had no reason to believe that ingesting hemlock would bring about
death has no justification for believing that someone (who has just
ingested hemlock) is about to die. Some have attempted to defend a
weaker version of the principle, one that replaces the second clause
of PIJ with the condition that the subject have some sort of
non-doxastic awareness or appreciation of the connection--e.g., that
one be acquainted with the connection or that it appear to one that
the connection holds (e.g., Tucker 2012). 



There are responses to the charge of vicious regress facing
anti-foundationalists. One is to deny the premise that circular
inferences are vicious or no good: granted, one can't
effectively convince someone who is skeptical of the truth of
*P* that it is true by relying on an inference that ultimately
comes back to *P*, but perhaps circular inferences can provide
justification despite being dialectically ineffective (i.e.,
ineffective in persuading others). Still, it seems odd to say that one
could justify *P* by use of an inference from *P* .
After all, if *P* is already justified, the subject does not
need to use it to justify *P*; and if it is not justified then,
in line with the first clause of PIJ, one could not use it to justify
*P*. More plausibly, the anti-foundationalist might reject the
presupposition that all justification is linear or one-directional,
that it flows from one belief to another, or is inherited by a belief
from others. According to coherentism about epistemic justification,
beliefs are justified "holistically" rather than in a
linear, piecemeal way. Each belief is justified by virtue of its
coherence with the rest of what one believes--in other words, by
virtue of belonging to a coherent set or web of beliefs. The
coherentist avoids the appearance of vicious circularity by insisting
that one needn't *first* have justification for believing
the other propositions in one's belief system. The coherence
theorist's response to the argument for foundationalism is, of
course, only as plausible as the coherence theory of justification
(see
 coherentist theories of epistemic justification).



Some forms of coherentism might complicate our taxonomy. According to
some coherentists, a belief can depend for its justification on how
well it "coheres" with the rest of one's beliefs,
and *if* this coherence is *not* understood in terms of
actual or available inference, then they would allow for dependent but
non-inferentially justified belief. Some beliefs may count as
foundational in the sense of not depending on inference from other
beliefs for justification, while still depending on other beliefs.




One other response is to embrace infinitism and hold that an infinite
regress is not necessarily vicious or problematic. Infinitism has a
few defenders (e.g., Peter Klein (1998) and more recently, Fantl
(2003) and Aikin (2011)). The infinitist accepts the need to be
*able* to supply non-circular justification for believing what
we do, but argues that given the complexity of the human mind and its
capacity to entertain and justifiably believe an infinite number of
propositions, there is nothing vicious about the relevant regresses we
face. There is no reason to suppose that we would be unable to justify
every proposition we believe by appeal to some other different
proposition which we justifiably believe. Infinitism is a view that
should be seriously considered, particularly once one realizes that
one not only can but arguably does have an infinite number of
justified beliefs (e.g., that 2 is greater than 1, that 3 is greater
that 1, and so on.). For some further discussion of infinitism and
challenges to it, see Klein and Turri (2014).



Some don't find the regress argument to be the best argument for
the existence of foundational justification; as with any argument by
elimination, it depends on whether the alternatives eliminated really
are untenable. Pryor (2013b), for example, claims that the best
argument comes from considering examples. I believe that I feel tired,
that I have a headache, that I intend to get a glass of water, that
black is not white; and in each case, it doesn't seem that my
justification is mediated by any other proposition. This supports the
claim that there are foundational beliefs, though it does not speak
directly to the thesis that all other beliefs must depend, ultimately,
on foundational beliefs for their justification. 


## 2. The Classical Analysis of Foundational Justification



Foundationalists are united in their conviction that there must be a
kind of justification that does not depend on the having of
justification for other beliefs. They nevertheless disagree radically
among themselves as to how to understand foundational justification.
In the latter part of the 20th century, the rise of
externalist epistemologies has generated even more fundamentally
different versions of foundationalism. It will not be possible to
survey all of the strikingly different analyses or theories that have
been offered of foundational justification. In what follows we will
examine a few of the more prominent versions of classical and
contemporary internalist and externalist foundationalism.


### 2.1 Foundational Justification as Infallible Belief



Descartes is often taken to be the paradigm of a classical
foundationalist. Determined to build knowledge on appropriate and
secure foundations, he seemed to want to identify foundational
knowledge with infallible belief (though there is another
interpretation that we'll turn to in the next section, one that
identifies foundational knowledge with infallible
*justification*). Implicitly or explicitly, others seemed to
follow his lead by restricting foundationally justified beliefs to
beliefs that cannot be mistaken. Following Lehrer (1974: 81) we might
formulate the following definition of infallible belief:
*S*'s belief that *P* at *t* is infallible
if *S*'s believing *P* at *t*
 entails[4]
 that *P* is true.



As Lehrer and others have pointed out, it is far from clear that this
concept of infallible belief has much relevance to an attempt to
understand the epistemic concept of foundational justification. The
first and most striking problem involves necessary truths. Every
necessary truth is entailed by every proposition, and thus if I happen
to believe a necessary truth, *P*, that I believe *P*
will entail that *P* is true. Thus, by the above definition my
belief that *P* will be infallible--and so, on the present
account, foundationally justified--whenever *P* is a necessary
truth even if *P* is something exceedingly complicated that I
can barely even comprehend.



Furthermore, a foundation of knowledge and justified belief restricted
to infallible beliefs (as defined above) would arguably be far too
thin to support any sort of substantial epistemic edifice. There are a
few contingent propositions that are entailed by the fact that they
are believed. My belief that I exist entails that I exist, that I have
at least one belief, that someone has beliefs, etc. But once we get
past these sorts of "self-referential" propositions,
propositions whose very subject matter is encompassed by the fact that
they are believed, it is hard to come up with uncontroversial examples
of contingent infallible beliefs. Ayer (1956: 19) argues that as long
as the belief that *P* is one state of affairs and
*P*'s being the case is an entirely different state of
affairs (not including as a constituent the former) there can be no
logical absurdity in the supposition that the former could occur
without the latter (see BonJour 1985: 27, for a similar argument).


### 2.2 Foundational Justification as Infallible Justification



It may be that classical foundationalists start off on the wrong foot
if they seek foundations in logical relations between the mere fact
that someone believes some proposition and the proposition's
being true. Foundational justification is, after all, a kind of
justification, and if the impossibility of error is essential to
foundational justification, it may be more plausible to locate the
source of infallibility in a special kind of justification available
in support of a belief. Let us say that *S*'s belief is
infallibly justified at *t* when *S*'s ground or
justification for believing *P* at *t* entails the truth
of *P*--in other words, when *S* cannot have that
ground or justification for believing that *P* while *P*
is false. The suggestion, then, is that a belief is foundationally
justified only if it is infallibly justified in this sense.



We still need to qualify the entailment in some way to circumvent the
problem discussed earlier. Whenever I have any justification at all
for believing a proposition that turns out to be necessarily true,
that justification will entail the necessary truth. But we do not want
just any sort of justification to yield infallibly justified belief,
even if the object of that belief is a necessary truth. This problem
is notoriously difficult to solve (see the entry on
 Certainty
 for more), but intuitively the solution should have something to do
with the relation between the fact that would make true the
proposition entailed and the fact that would make true the proposition
that entails it. More specifically, we could say that *P*
entails\* *Q* only if the fact that would make *P* true
is at least a constituent of the fact that would make *Q* true.
This suggestion can be considered at best only preliminary since we
will obviously need a more detailed account of facts and their
constituents. That I have grey hair entails that someone has grey
hair, but is my having grey hair a constituent of the fact that is
someone's having grey hair? There is certainly a sense in which
it is something one can point to in answer to the question "What
makes it true that someone has grey hair?" One cannot
appropriately point to my having grey hair as something that makes it
true that two plus two equals four. With some such relation in place,
perhaps we can appropriately restrict the class of necessary truths we
can be infallibly justified in believing, and still allow contingent
truths to be infallibly justified: there is a sense in which one can
"point" to one's own experience when asked,
"What makes it true that you are in pain?"



Consider again my belief that I'm in pain (when I am). If such a
belief is foundationally justified, in what does the justification for
that belief consist? What is it that distinguishes this belief from my
belief about, say, whether it will rain next week? Some
foundationalists want to locate the foundational justification in the
truth-maker for the proposition believed. What justifies me in
believing that I'm in pain when I am is the mere fact that
I'm in pain. But again, what is it about my being in pain as
opposed to its raining next week which makes it appropriate to claim
that my being in pain justifies me in believing that I'm in pain
while its raining next week doesn't justify me in believing that
it will rain next week?



It is tempting to think that the foundationalist is better off
appealing to some special *relation* that I have to my pain
which makes it unnecessary to look to other beliefs in order to
justify my belief that I'm in pain. It is the fact that I have a
kind of *access* to my pain that no one else has that makes my
belief foundationally justified while others must rely on inference in
order to discover that I am in this state. This takes us to another
classical version of foundationalism, the acquaintance theory. Perhaps
the best known proponent of an acquaintance theory is Bertrand Russell
(1910-11, 1913; for more on the acquaintance theory, see entry
on
 knowledge by acquaintance vs. description).
 But it takes little imagination to read the view into most of the
British empiricists. Roughly the view is that what justifies
*S* in believing that he is in pain is the fact that *S*
is acquainted with his pain in a way in which he is not acquainted
with any contingent facts about other people, the physical world, the
future, and so on. Russell (1910-11) characterizes acquaintance
as a relation of *direct or immediate awareness*, a relation in
which, as he and some others have put it, something is
"presented" or simply "given" to the subject
(Lewis 1929 and 1946; Moser 1989: 80ff.; Fales 1996).



Some doubt that acquaintance with some fact is sufficient, on its own,
to justify belief in a corresponding proposition. To help see the
motivation for this, consider inferential beliefs again. A justified
belief that *P* cannot provide justification for believing
every other proposition it entails, for it might be that the
entailment relation is beyond one's cognitive grasp, or the
inference is not something one has made or is even able to make. (As
already discussed in
 section 1,
 reflection on such cases might lead us to accept the second clause of
PIJ.) Similarly, some acquaintance theorists argue that acquaintance
with some fact cannot provide justification for a belief in the
absence of an awareness of (or at least an ability to become aware of)
the relevance of the fact to the truth of the proposition believed.
For example, I may be acquainted with a very specific color or shape
in my visual field, and also believe (correctly) that I am
experiencing such-and-such a color or shape, but I might actually be
really bad at identifying such specific features and my belief might
be little more than a lucky guess. Suppose these theorists also accept
a correspondence conception of truth according to which, roughly, a
proposition is true just in case it corresponds to the facts or to the
way the world is; they might add that to be fully justified in
believing a proposition to be true one must be acquainted not only
with the fact that makes the proposition true but also with the
relation of correspondence that holds between the proposition and the
fact. For example, in order to be justified in believing that I am
experiencing fuchsia, I must be acquainted with (or at least be able
to become acquainted with) the "match", "fit",
or correspondence between my thought or belief that I am experiencing
fuchsia and the fact that I am experiencing
 fuchsia.[5]



When acquaintance with the fact that *P* is part of what
constitutes my foundational justification for believing *P*,
there is a trivial sense in which my foundational justification is
infallible. I can't be directly acquainted with the fact that
*P* while I believe *P* falsely. However, most
contemporary foundationalists are fallibilists about foundational
justification: they hold that one could be foundationally justified in
believing propositions that are false. It seems plausible that I could
be justified in believing, for example, that I am experiencing a mild
pain when in fact I am experiencing an itch, or that I could be
justified in believing I am experiencing a specific shade of color
when I am in fact experiencing a slightly different shade. Even some
acquaintance theorists want to allow for some fallible foundations.
For example, Fumerton (1995) holds that one can be noninferentially
justified in believing *P* by virtue of being directly
acquainted with a fact very similar to, but ultimately different from,
the fact that *P* (the fact that makes *P* true). Such
an acquaintance theory could allow for the possibility of a
foundationally justified but false belief that *P*. Huemer
(2007), Poston (2010), and Tucker (2016) argue, however, that
classical foundationalists have difficulty accommodating fallible
foundational beliefs. For some replies, see Fumerton (2010 and 2016),
and Hasan (2013).



Not all classical foundationalists require acquaintance with the
correspondence (or some other similar relation) between some thought
or proposition and a distinct fact for one to have knowledge by
acquaintance. For example, according to McGrew (1995, 1998), for any
object of acquaintance or direct awareness it is possible to form a
belief in which a demonstrative concept refers directly to it. By
virtue of my acquaintance with a painful experience, I can believe
directly of it that it exists, or that the property demonstrated,
painfulness, is instantiated. We could express the belief roughly by
saying "I am experiencing *this.*" For this kind of
belief (unlike most other beliefs regarding contingent facts), to
genuinely understand or grasp the content of the belief *is* to
grasp its truth. Such demonstratively formed beliefs are guaranteed to
be true:



> 
> 
> For what this belief amounts to is that one has a certain experience;
> and a necessary condition for the formation of the belief itself is
> that one be having just that experience. (McGrew 1995: 90)
> 
> 
> 



Rather than attempt to accommodate fallible foundations, McGrew
follows early classical foundationalists in arguing that infallibility
or infallible justification (what he calls
"incorrigibility") is in fact required for foundational
justification. Some worry, however, that such foundations, even if
they are generally available, are too "thin": that I am
"experiencing *this*" doesn't seem to convey
anything about what sort of experience I am having, and it is
difficult to see how we could get from here to justified beliefs that
involve categorizing or conceptualizing our experiences in more
informative ways (see, e.g., Sosa 2003).


## 3. Objections to Classical Foundationalism



Once the received view, classical foundationalism has come under
considerable attack in the last few decades. Here we will consider the
most prominent objections that target the classical view of
foundational beliefs. (For some more objections and discussion, see
entry on
 knowledge by acquaintance vs. description.)


### 3.1 Regress Problems for Access Internalism



Laurence BonJour (1985: ch. 4) raised a highly influential objection
to foundationalism (an objection raised before he joined the ranks of
foundationalists). The objection presupposed a strong form of what we
might call access internalism. (We discuss the internalist/externalist
controversy in more detail in
 section 6
 below.) The access internalist argues, roughly, that a feature of a
belief or epistemic situation that makes a belief foundationally
justified for us must be a feature to which we have actual or
potential access. Moreover, we must have access to the fact that the
feature in question is relevant to the truth or probability of what we
believe. Suppose some foundationalist offers an account according to
which a belief *B* is foundationally justified only if it has
some characteristic *X*. BonJour argues that the mere fact that
the belief has *X* could not justify the believer in holding
*B*. The believer would also need access to the fact that
*B* has *X* and that beliefs of this sort are likely to
be true. But according to the strong access requirement BonJour
accepts, this requires actual or potential *knowledge or justified
belief* that *B* has *X* and that beliefs of this
sort are likely to be true. So *B* would need other justified
beliefs for its justification. *B*'s status as a
foundationally justified belief is destroyed.



BonJour presented the objection on the way to developing a coherence
theory of empirical justification. But it ultimately became obvious
that the objection to foundationalism was too strong. Given the
structure of the argument it should become evident that the coherence
theory (and any other theory) would be equally vulnerable to the
argument. Just replace "*X*" with some complicated
description of beliefs cohering with each other. Coherence of
one's beliefs would never be sufficient for justification, for
one would have to already be justified in believing that one's
beliefs were coherent and that such coherence makes one's
beliefs likely to be true. That might suggest to the classical
foundationalist that strong access internalism is a view to be
avoided.



Michael Bergmann (2006: chs. 1 and 2) argues, however, that if to
avoid regress we drop the strong access requirements that are so dear
to some internalists, we also lose the motivation for the view. As
Bergmann sees it, the attraction of internalism is its claim to be
able to construe justification in such a way that it gives a subject
with a justified belief a certain assurance from the subjective
perspective, an assurance that externalist views (discussed below)
don't offer. According to Bergmann, even acquaintance with truth
bearers, truth makers and a correspondence holding between them
doesn't carry with it assurance unless it is accompanied by a
justified belief that all these relations obtain. And this will take
us again on the road to regress. Bergmann's challenge is serious
and the traditional acquaintance theorist who rejects the strong
access requirement will need to convince you that acquaintance with
the correspondence between a fact and a thought that P can make a
difference to the subject's perspective on the truth of P
without needing justification for thinking that the fact corresponds to
P (see Hasan 2011 for a reply along these lines). Alternatively, the
internalist might attempt to convince you that the regress that comes
with accepting the strong access requirement is not vicious after all
(see Fales 2014).


### 3.2 The Sellarsian Dilemma



BonJour was quite aware that some classical foundationalists would
attempt to avoid the regress problem raised in the previous section by
appeal to the idea that some things are simply "given" to
us, or that we directly "apprehend" or are
"acquainted with" them. Inspired by Sellars (1963),
BonJour (1978, 1985: ch. 4) presented the following objection to
classical foundationalism, often referred to as the "Sellarsian
Dilemma". Does the awareness or acquaintance that is the alleged
source of noninferential justification involve the acceptance of a
proposition or thought, or at least the categorization of some sensory
item or the application of some concept to experience? If, on the one
hand, the acquaintance or awareness is propositional or conceptual in
this way, then while such acts or episodes of awareness seem capable,
in principle, of justifying other beliefs, they would surely need to
be justified themselves. The episode of awareness would involve
something like the acceptance of a proposition, or the categorization
of experience, and such an attitude or act clearly needs justification
if it is to justify anything else. But then, the allegedly
foundational belief is not foundational after all. If, on the other
hand, we can regard direct awareness as nonpropositional and
nonconceptual, then while these acts or states of awareness do not
require or even admit of justification they also don't seem
capable on their own of providing a reason or justification for
propositional items like beliefs. Therefore, the classical
foundationalist's acquaintance or direct awareness cannot serve
as a foundational source of knowledge or justified belief.



One proposed solution to the dilemma begins by emphasizing that
acquaintance with a fact is not by itself an epistemic relation. The
acquaintance theorist can argue that one has a noninferentially
justified belief that *P* only when one has the thought that
*P* and one is acquainted with the fact that *P*, the
thought that *P*, and the relation of correspondence holding
between the thought that *P* and the fact that *P*. On
such a view no single act of acquaintance yields knowledge or
justified belief, but when everything that is constitutive of a
thought or a proposition's being true is immediately before
consciousness, there is nothing more that one could want or need to
justify a belief. Acts of acquaintance, including acquaintance with
propositions, do not involve belief, judgment, or concept application,
and so do not need justification. However, if the objects of
acquaintance, that with which we are acquainted, can be propositional,
then perhaps acquaintance with the rights sorts of items (including
propositional ones) can make a difference to justification. This view
thus grants that a single act of acquaintance with a fact does not
provide justification, but rejects the dilemma's assumption that
there are no acts of acquaintance that can, singly or in any
combination, make a difference to justification. (See Fumerton 1995
for a reply of this sort. For a reply that is similar in many
respects, see BonJour 2000 and 2003.)



A classical foundationalist who prefers McGrew's (1995, 1998)
view, according to which noninferentially justified beliefs are formed
by demonstrative reference, would give a somewhat different response.
An act of acquaintance alone is not sufficient for justification; one
must also form a belief in such a way that the direct object of
acquaintance becomes a constituent of the belief itself, or part of
the belief's very content. The relevance of the truth-maker to
the proposition believed is transparent and guaranteed by the manner
in which the belief is formed: acquaintance simply picks out some
feature of experience and takes it up into the content of a belief or
judgment that asserts that the feature exists or is instantiated. This
view thus grants that an act of acquaintance does not automatically
provide justification for a corresponding belief, but rejects the
dilemma's assumption that there is no way to use the act of
acquaintance in forming one's belief in a way that does make a
difference to justification.


### 3.3 Doubts about Correspondence and Acquaintance



The direct acquaintance theorist does presuppose the intelligibility
of a world that has "structure" independent of any
structure imposed by the mind. Without facts that are independent of
the thoughts and judgments that represent them, one could not make
sense of a relation of acquaintance between a person and a fact, a
relation that grounds foundational justification. More radical
contemporary rejections of foundationalism may well involve
dissatisfaction with the foundationalist's implicit commitment
to a strong realistic correspondence conception of truth as involving
some relation to mind-independent facts. A discussion of problems with
the correspondence conception and alternatives would take us far
afield, however. (For more, see the entry on the
 correspondence theory of truth.)



Just as some reject the conception of truth underlying classical
foundationalist accounts of foundational justification, so others
profess to be bewildered by some of the fundamental concepts employed
in defining foundational justification. The acquaintance theorist
tends to have relatively little to say by way of analyzing what direct
acquaintance is. To be sure, one can try to give someone a feel for
what one is talking about by a method of contrast--e.g., by
contrasting one's awareness of pain with the temporary
distraction caused by an engrossing conversation. It is tempting to
suppose that for a short time the pain was still present but the
person with the pain was no longer aware of the fact that the pain
exists. This awareness, the acquaintance theorist will argue, is
obviously something over and above mere belief in the existence of the
pain, as one can believe that one is in a mental state (say a
subconscious mental state) without being aware of that state. (Some
may find it odd to speak of having a pain without being aware of it;
in that case, it may help to consider similar cases involving desire,
hope, fear, or belief.) Like most theories foundationalism will,
however, ultimately rest its intelligibility on an appeal to a basic
or primitive concept, one that defies further analysis. Just as one
needs to end epistemic regresses with foundational justification, the
foundationalist will argue, so one needs to end conceptual regresses
with concepts one grasps without further definition.


### 3.4 The Threat of Skepticism



Although opponents of classical foundationalism are not always eager
to admit it, we suspect that the primary dissatisfaction with
classical foundationalism lies with the difficulty the view has
avoiding radical skepticism. On infallible belief, infallible
justification, or direct acquaintance theories of foundational
justification, there is precious little included in the foundations of
knowledge. Most classical foundationalists reject the idea that one
can have noninferentially justified beliefs about the past, but the
present disappears into the past in the blink of an eye. How can one
even hope to get back the vast body of knowledge one
pre-philosophically supposes one has, if one's epistemic base is
so impoverished? If the second clause of the Principle of Inferential
Justification were accepted, the problem is even more serious. One
might be able to convince oneself that one can know noninferentially
the principles of deductive reasoning, but deduction will not take one
usefully beyond the foundations of knowledge and justified belief. As
Mill (1906: 126) argued, there is a very real sense in which one
doesn't advance one's knowledge significantly employing a
form of reasoning that takes one only to conclusions that were
implicitly contained in the conjunction of one's premises. To
advance beyond foundations we will inevitably need to employ
non-deductive reasoning and according to PIJ that will ultimately
require us to have noninferential knowledge of propositions describing
probability connections between evidence and conclusions that are not
logically implied by the evidence. It is not absurd on the face of it
to suppose that one can have noninferential *a priori*
knowledge of probabilistic connections, but it is perhaps an
understatement to say that the view is not popular (see Russell 1948
for an excellent discussion of this issue).


## 4. Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism



We noted above that at least many philosophers are convinced that
acceptance of classical foundationalism leads inevitably to an
unacceptably radical skepticism. Some contemporary epistemologists
seek a more modest foundationalism that will make it much easier to
respond to the skeptic's arguments. Michael Huemer's
(2001) phenomenal conservatism and Jim Pryor's (2000) dogmatism
are both views that are far more "permissive" in allowing
an extensive range of beliefs to have foundational justification. And
their views are not unrelated to Chisholm's longstanding efforts
(e.g., 1989) to locate foundational justification for believing
various propositions about one's past and about one's
physical environment in the character of one's experiential
states.



Huemer offers his view as an improvement on a cruder view once
defended by Chisholm (1980) that is often called "epistemic
conservatism" and sometimes, more aptly, "doxastic
conservatism." The doxastic conservative takes the mere fact
that you believe some proposition *P* to provide *prima
facie* justification for believing *P*. This view does not
imply that the mere fact that you believe something renders the belief
justified, for it may be that your belief is *prima facie*justified but not *ultima facie* justified: if you have
good reasons to disbelieve *P*, or good reasons to think that
your belief that *P* is unreliable or untrustworthy, then your
belief is "defeated" and not justified. In other words,
according to doxastic conservatism, if S believes that *P*
then, *in the absence of defeaters*, S has justification for
believing that *P*. 



Many worry that the view is vulnerable to counterexamples, for it
seems committed to regarding beliefs that clearly have nothing going
for them as justified. One of the better counterexamples involves
cases in which one forms a belief in a proposition one has no evidence
for or against. Suppose that despite lacking any evidence for or
against the belief, *S* somehow comes to believe that there is
an even number of grains of sand on a particular beach (Foley 1983:
174-5), or that a particular coin that is tossed and lands out
of sight has landed "tails" up (Christensen 1994: 74).
Suppose also that *S* lacks any defeaters for the belief:
*S* has no evidence against the proposition, and is not aware
of having formed the belief without evidence or in an unreliable way.
Doxastic conservatism yields the counterintuitive result that this
belief is rational or justified. (For an attempt to respond to this
and related objections on behalf of doxastic conservatism, see McCain
2008.)



In any event, most foundationalists sympathetic to internalism prefer
a view according to which a non-belief state provides justification
for foundational belief. According to *phenomenal
conservatism*, the justifying state is a "seeming" or
"appearance": if it *seems* to *S* that
*P*, then, in the absence of defeaters, *S* thereby has
some degree of justification for believing that *P* (Huemer
2001, 2007, 2013; Cullison 2010; Tucker 2010; Skene 2013). These
appearances come in various sorts: sensory or perceptual, intellectual
or intuitive, mnemonic, and introspective. Many use the term
"dogmatism" to refer to the same view, or to the view
restricted to some domain, typically to *perception*: if it
*perceptually* *seems* to *S* that *P*,
then, in the absence of defeaters, *S* thereby has some
justification for believing that *P*.



It is worth noting that Pryor himself uses the term
"dogmatism" to refer to the view that "justification
is sometimes both immediate and underminable" (2013a: 96), and
so uses the term in a way that is compatible with the rejection of
phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism as these terms are generally
understood. While those who accept the principle (whether in its
general form or as restricted to perceptual seemings) do thereby hold
that some states provide immediate but underminable or defeasible
justification, it is possible to accept that some other states provide
immediate but underminable justification and deny that perceptual
seemings do. However, for simplicity and to follow the more common
usage, we use the two labels "phenomenal conservatism" and
"dogmatism" more or less interchangeably in what
follows.



The main motivation for phenomenal conservatism is straightforward. As
already noted, the view is far more "permissive" than
classical foundationalism in allowing for more extensive foundational
justification. For example, I believe that there is a cat on my lap,
that I had fish for dinner last night, that I feel thirsty, that I am
thinking about getting a glass of water, that pleasure is good, and
that 2 + 3 = 5. *Prima facie*, it is plausible to say that I
believe these propositions because they seem or appear to be
true--because it seems to me that there is a cat on my lap, that
I had fish last night, and so on. If I do indeed believe these things
on the basis of these seemings or appearances, and they constitute an
adequate source of justification, then, in the absence of defeaters, I
have justification for these beliefs. And if we deny that they are
good sources of justification, then how do we avoid skepticism? As
Huemer puts it, "if undefeated appearances are not a source of
justified belief, then how is one to avoid skepticism about the
external world, the past, values, abstract objects, and so on? Unless
this challenge can be met, we would be wise to place our trust in the
appearances...." (2013, p. 349). 



What exactly are these "seemings" or
"appearances"? The distinction between seemings and
beliefs is typically introduced with examples. Once we are familiar
with the Muller-Lyer illusion, we no longer believe that the
lines are of unequal length even though, in some sense, they still
appear to be unequal. The same holds for various apparent intuitions
and apparent memories that we become convinced are false. Moreover,
beliefs are subject to epistemic norms and can be supported by
epistemic reasons, while it doesn't seem to make sense to say
the same of appearances (McCain and Moretti 2021, p. 56-7).
Huemer and others will claim that seemings cannot be identified with
dispositions to believe, inclinations to believe, or impulses to
believe, though not everyone will agree about this. Huemer argues for
this on three main grounds (2007: 30-1). First, it is possible
to have a persisting seeming or appearance (e.g., that one line is
longer than another, or that a stick submerged in water is bent) but
be so convinced that it is a mere illusion that you have no
disposition or inclination to believe it. Second, it is possible to be
inclined to believe that *P* (because, e.g., you really want it
to be true) in the absence of a corresponding seeming that *P*.
Third, appearances can provide non-trivial explanations for what we
believe or what we are disposed to believe: I am inclined to believe
that there is a bus approaching because it perceptually seems that
there is; understanding the latter seeming as an inclination to
believe trivializes the explanation. Some have pointed out, however,
that many problems raised with doxastic accounts of appearances can be
avoided by understanding appearances as beliefs or inclinations to
believe with different contents. According to Gluer (2018)
perceptual appearances might be understood as beliefs to the effect
that something *looks* some way. And according to Conee (2013)
and Tooley (2013), seemings can be understood as felt inclinations to
believe that some state is evidence for *P.*



Proponents of phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism generally hold
that seemings are a kind of experience distinct from beliefs and
inclinations to believe. But they also hold that seemings are
nevertheless belief-like in that they are propositional attitudes or
at least have propositional or representational contents. And they
hold that seemings have a distinctive phenomenal character: seemings
are "assertive" (Huemer 2013); they have a
"phenomenal force" to them such that "it
'feels as if' we can just tell that those propositions are
true...just by virtue of having them so represented" (Pryor
2000, p. 547, n. 23); "a seeming that *P*
'recommends' *P* as true or 'assures'
the subject of P's truth" (Tucker 2013). There is an
interesting disagreement among those who are take seemings to be a
kind of experience, a disagreement that exists even among those who
are sympathetic to phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism in some form.
The disagreement concerns the relationship between seemings and
sensations or sensory experiences. According to some (e.g., Huemer
2001, Ch. 4 and Tolhurst 1998) sensations are themselves a kind or
species of seeming--perceptual seemings--while others (e.g.,
Tucker 2010, Brogaard 2013) take sensations to be distinct from
perceptual seemings, though often accompanied by them. (For more on
the relationship between sensations and seemings, see Tucker 2013, pp.
7-8.) Some have argued that any appearance-based theory of
justification should accept that other features accompanying
appearances can affect whether and how strongly they might justify
beliefs (Reiland 2015, Brogaard and Gatzia 2018, McCain and Moretti
2021).



Some have pointed out that attempting to capture the phenomenal
character of seemings by saying they are "assertive" is
potentially misleading given that judgments and beliefs are assertive
and seemings are supposed to be non-doxastic experiential states
(Smithies 2019, p. 93, McAllister 2018, p. 3082), and something
similar might be said of the claim that seemings
"recommend" or "assure" us of their truth.
Some find the appeal to phenomenal force obscure (Conee 2013 and
Tooley 2013), while many others take something like phenomenal force
to be an important and familiar, if difficult to describe, feature of
mental states (e.g., Pryor 2000, Makie 2013, McGrath 2013, Skene 2013,
McAllister 2018, Moretti and McCain 2021). 



Both Huemer and Pryor make clear that the intentional states that
provide justification do so without one's having to be aware of
the fact that one is in such states. They might both allow, however,
that one can turn one's attention inward to discover the fact
that one is in such states, and that one can, in principle, discover
(perhaps *a priori*) that the states in question do give one
the relevant epistemic justification.


## 5. Objections to Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism



In this section, we focus on objections commonly raised against
phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism, though they arguably apply to
other internalist foundationalist views as well.



As one might expect, the main worry with both Huemer's
phenomenal conservatism and Pryor's dogmatism is the very air of
dogmatism that Pryor embraces in his label for the view. It strikes
many epistemologists that these views make getting justification for
one's beliefs too easy. Perhaps sensations are representational
states, and perhaps there is the kind of representational state that
Huemer and other phenomenal conservatives call an appearance or a
seeming, but as why should we assume that they accurately represent
the world around us? Fear is a representational or propositional
state, but from the fact that I fear that there are ghosts, it hardly
seems to follow that I have a *prima facie* justification for
believing that there are ghosts. For that matter, belief is a
representational state and if we doubt that mere belief can provide
justification, why should we think another representational state,
like a seeming, provides justification? Huemer and Pryor will answer
that the representational states they offer as justifiers, perhaps
because of their peculiar "phenomenal force" or
"assertiveness", are simply different in this respect.
While providing no guarantee that the world is as represented, they
simply carry with them justification that other representational
states are incapable of providing.



The claim that phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism make getting
justification too easy can be motivated by the "problem of easy
knowledge". Since this problem has been raised against both
internalist and externalist alternatives to classical foundationalism,
we present this problem in
 section 8,
 after discussing externalism.


### 5.1 The Cognitive Penetration Objection



A recent objection to phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism involves
appeal to cases of "cognitive penetration", cases in which
propositional attitudes (beliefs, fears, desires, etc.) that the
subject already has give rise to a related seeming. The objection
comes in two forms. The first is the "illegitimate boost"
objection. If I have prior justification to believe that *P*
(e.g., that my car is in my garage), and that belief causes me to have
a seeming that *P* (e.g., the belief and expectation make it
visually seem to me that my car is in my garage when I glance quickly
in the direction of my garage), dogmatism entails that the
belief's justification goes up. The usual reply here is that the
relevant claim is not counterintuitive. I gain no additional
justification via the seeming if I have a good reason to suspect that
my having the seeming depends on my having the belief; but in the case
where I have no such reason, it is not clearly counterintuitive to say
that I am justified. Tucker (2013: 14) gives a useful analogy to
testimony: if Bill and Jill both testify to me, at different times,
that there is free pizza on the quad, then both testimonies give me
more reason to believe than either of them separately, and this still
holds if *unbeknownst to me* Jill tells me only because she
heard it from Bill.



The second form of the "cognitive penetration" objection
is sometimes called the "tainted source" objection (Huemer
2013), and it arises from the fact that propositional attitudes other
than justified belief--fears and desires, unjustified beliefs,
etc.--can influence how things seem to us. Suppose, for example,
that Jill fears that Jack is angry with her, and that upon seeing Jack
that fear partly causes it to seem to her that Jack is angry with her
(Siegel 2013). Many find it counterintuitive that Jill could acquire
justification for her belief in this way. The natural suggestion is
that the etiology of the belief matters to its epistemic justification
(see, e.g., Markie 2005, 2013; Goldman 2009; Lyons 2011; Siegel 2013).
Once again, there are some who do not share the intuition that the
subject's justification is affected by the belief's causal
history when that causal history is not accessible to the subject
(e.g., Huemer 2013). But at least some phenomenal conservatives admit
to feeling the pull of the intuition in response to some of the cases,
and attempt to account for it by saying that there is something else
that is epistemically bad in the situation--e.g., while the
belief is epistemically justified, the agent is epistemically
irresponsible, criticizable, or cognitively defective in some way
(e.g., Skene 2013), or lacks the sort of justification that can turn
true belief into knowledge (e.g., Tucker 2010). Some worry, however,
that not all the problematic "tainted source" cases can be
handled in these ways (see Markie 2013 and McGrath 2013.)


## 6. Externalist Versions of Foundationalism



The epistemic landscape has changed dramatically in the last forty or
fifty years with the rise of externalist epistemologies. It is
notoriously difficult to define clearly the controversy between
internalists and externalists in epistemology. (For a detailed
discussion of alternative ways of defining the controversy, see
Fumerton 1995: chs. 3 and 4. See also the entry on
 internalist and externalist conceptions of epistemic justification.)



There are at least two common ways of understanding the controversy.
It is sometimes taken to be a controversy over whether or not one can
identify epistemic properties with "internal" states of
believers. According to the view we might call "internal state
internalism" (sometimes called "mentalism"),
justification is analyzed in terms of or depends essentially and only
on what is inside the mind. It follows on this view that no two
individuals can be internally or mentally alike in all respects and
yet differ in the justification they have for the same beliefs. In one
sense, then, to be an externalist (a non-mentalist) is to claim that
one's justification involves or depends essentially on some
facts or states of affairs outside the mind. Others take the
controversy to center over the question of whether one requires
certain sorts of access for justification. The "access
internalist" holds (roughly) that being justified in believing
that *P* requires that there be something within or at least
available to one's perspective or awareness which is relevant to
the truth or justification of *P*. (While some access
internalists seem to have held that everything that determines
justification must be accessible, as we are about to see, hardly any
internalists hold such a strong position.) The "access
externalist" denies that justification requires any such access.
The access externalist need not deny that something relevant to the
truth of *P* is, at least sometimes, accessible to the subject
who has justification for *P*; but paradigm externalists deny
that access is always *required* for justification.



Some accept both forms of "internalism", though perhaps
take one sense to be more fundamental than the other. For example, one
might take access internalism to be more fundamental, and hold that
one can have access only to mental states and internal facts about
them, and so accept mentalism as a consequence. Or one might take the
mentalist thesis to be more fundamental, and argue that one has some
minimal access to the relevant mental facts, and so accept some form
of access internalism as well. But it is possible to accept one form
of internalism and reject the other. Some mentalists might deny that
we have access to all the mental states or features that make a
difference to justification. And some access internalists might hold
that we can be directly aware of external objects, external states of
affairs, or external abstract entities or relations, and take this
direct awareness to make a difference to one's justification;
they would deny that one's justifiers must always be mental,
though they might accept the thesis that there can be no difference in
justification without a mental difference, assuming that
*access* even to a non-mental entity counts as a mental
relation or mental state.



Access internalisms vary depending on what sort of
"access" is required (true belief, justified belief,
acquaintance, etc.), and on what it is that must be accessed for
justification. There are thus stronger and weaker forms of access
internalism, and as a result the epistemic landscape is quite complex.
Certainly, paradigm externalists would reject the second clause of the
PIJ. According to virtually all externalists, one can arrive at a
justified belief in *P* by inferring it from *E* without
being aware of any sort of evidential connection between *E*
and *P*; the fact that there is a good evidential connection
between *E* and *P* can be external to the
subject's mind and inaccessible to the subject. They would also
reject a parallel principle for *noninferential* justification:
one can arrive at a justified belief on the basis of some sensory or
other belief-independent input without being aware of any sort of
evidential connection between the input and the belief. Phenomenal
conservatives and dogmatists tend to agree with the paradigm
externalist in rejecting the requirement that one grasp a connection
between one's epistemic grounds or evidence and the proposition
believed (though they deny that external conditions like reliability
discussed below are also needed for justification). However,
externalists typically allow that in principle one could have a
foundational belief in the absence of any appearance or seeming. Some
epistemologists have combined some modest internal requirements with
externalist ones in their accounts of epistemic justification (see,
for example, Alston 1989 and Steup 2004).



While the externalist defends radically different views than those of
classical foundationalists, the structure of knowledge and
justification that emerges from such theories is still often a
foundationalist structure. We might first illustrate the point by
examining the view defended by the most prominent of the externalists,
Alvin Goldman's
 reliabilism.[6]
 The fundamental idea behind reliabilism is strikingly simple.
Justified beliefs are reliably produced beliefs. Reliably produced
beliefs are beliefs that are the product of a reliable process, and a
reliable process is one that yields beliefs that are usually true (or
would usually be true if enough of them were
 generated).[7]
 Justified beliefs are worth having because justified beliefs are
probably true.



Goldman initially distinguished two importantly different sorts of
justified beliefs--those that result from belief-independent
processes and those that result from belief-dependent processes. The
former are processes that take as their "input" stimuli
other than beliefs; the latter are beliefs produced by processes that
take as their input at least some other beliefs. So, for example, it
is possible that we have evolved in such a way that when prompted with
certain sensory input we immediately and unreflectively reach
conclusions about external objects. And we may live in a world in
which beliefs about the external world produced in this way are
usually true (or would usually be true if enough of them were
generated). Such beliefs will be justified by virtue of being the
product of reliable belief-independent processes. This is basically
the "base clause" of the reliabilist's analysis, a
principle of foundational or noninferential justification: if a belief
is the product of a reliable belief-independent process, then it is
justified. Reliabilists generally add to this a condition requiring,
in effect, that there be no defeaters available to the
subject--e.g., no good reason or justification to think that the
belief is false, unreliable or untrustworthy. (Specifying the needed
"no defeater" condition in the base clause without using
epistemic terms like 'justification' and
'reason' is a nontrivial matter. Goldman (1979) proposes
adding the condition that there be no reliable belief-withholding
process available to the subject.) These foundational beliefs can in
turn be taken as input for reliable belief-dependent processes in
order to generate still more justified beliefs. A belief-dependent
process is "conditionally" reliable if its output beliefs
are usually (or would usually) be true if the relevant input beliefs
are true. The output beliefs of conditionally reliable
belief-dependent processes are justified, provided that the input
beliefs are justified. This is basically the "recursive
clause" of the reliabilist's analysis, a principle of
nonfoundational or inferential justification: if a belief is the
output of a conditionally reliable belief-dependent process, and the
input beliefs are justified, then (absent defeaters) the output belief
is justified.



The above is a crude sketch of Goldman's early
reliabilism--he later modified it to deal with a number of
objections. But the sketch is enough to bring out the foundationalist
structure inherent in a reliabilist account. The reliabilist actually
accepts the first clause of PIJ, and avoids the epistemic regress by
embracing a kind of justified belief that does not owe its
justification to the having of other justified beliefs. Any undefeated
belief resulting from a reliable belief-independent process is
justified. No other beliefs are involved in the justification. So,
such beliefs are foundational.



Reliabilism might complicate our taxonomy. Some reliabilists might
hold that some belief-dependent processes (taking other beliefs as
input) can provide justification without being inferential processes.
After all, there's nothing about the reliability of a process
that requires that it involve anything like an inference. Indeed,
perhaps some memorial processes, or certain sub-conscious processes,
are conditionally reliable and so can provide justification (absent
defeaters). We will see in discussing objections in
 section 7.1,
 however, that this might lead to counterintuitive consequences. 



It should be noted that Goldman (1979) himself denies that one could
give a strict definition of an evaluative or normative epistemic term
like 'justification' without using other, similar
evaluative or normative terms. Still, he is interested in providing
"substantive conditions", conditions that specify, *in
non-epistemic terms*, when a belief is justified. In that sense,
Goldman remains interested in providing a general and substantive
theory of justification.



We have illustrated the way in which an externalist account of
justified belief can exemplify a foundationalist structure by
examining one of the most prominent versions of externalism,
reliabilism. But other versions of externalism are also implicitly or
explicitly committed to a version of foundationalism, or, at the very
least, give an account of justification that would enable one to
distinguish noninferential from inferential justification, direct from
indirect knowledge. Consider, for example, a crude version of the
so-called causal theory of knowledge according to which one knows a
proposition when one believes it and the belief is caused (in the
"right" way) by the very fact that makes true what is
believed. On such an account one can distinguish causal chains leading
to the belief in question that involve intermediate beliefs from those
that do not. Using this distinction, one can again define a
distinction between foundational and nonfoundational knowledge:
roughly, the causes of belief that do not include other beliefs are
the ones that would be foundational
 knowledge.[8]



Externalist versions of foundationalism are probably attractive to
many because they seem to allow at least the possibility of a much
expanded foundational base of justified beliefs. Unlike the Cartesian
view, the reliabilist's distinction between foundational and
non-foundational belief has nothing to do with whether the beliefs
are somehow infallible or infallibly justified. If nature has been
co-operative enough to ensure the evolution of cognitive agents who
respond to their environmental stimuli with mostly true beliefs, then
there might be an enormous store of foundational knowledge upon which
we can draw in arriving at inferentially justified conclusions. On
most externalist accounts of foundational belief there are literally
no *a priori* constraints on what might end up being
foundationally justified. Any proposition might have been believed as
the result of the operation of some conceivable sort of reliable
belief-forming process. Moreover, many epistemologists hold that
justifiers must in some way be truth-conducive or probable, and the
requirement of reliability (or some other such external condition)
makes the connection to the truth explicit. In contrast, non-classical
internalist foundationalist views like phenomenal conservatism
threaten to sever the connection between justification and truth or
probability, for it is possible that propositions that seem true are
mostly false.


## 7. Objections to Externalist Versions of Foundationalism



A full evaluation of externalist versions of foundationalism is far
beyond the scope of this entry (see the entry on
 internalist and externalist conceptions of epistemic justification).
 Here we must inevitably be selective, and focus on reliabilism for
illustration (see entry on
 reliabilist epistemology).


### 7.1 Challenges to Sufficiency: Norman and Truetemp



The very ease with which the externalist can potentially broaden the
foundational base of knowledge or justified belief is, ironically, one
of the primary concerns of those philosophers unhappy with externalist
epistemology. One of the best-known objections to externalism attempts
to show that the externalist's conditions for foundational
belief are not sufficient for justification. Recall that for the
reliabilist a belief is justified if it is the product of a reliable
belief-independent process and there are no defeaters for the belief
available to the subject. Consider BonJour's (1985: ch. 3) case
of Norman: We can imagine that Norman is a highly reliable
clairvoyant, that his clairvoyance produces a belief that the
President is in New York. Suppose also that he does not realize that
he is a clairvoyant, and that he has no reasons or evidence for or
against the belief or the reliability of whatever process produced it.
Intuitively, Norman's belief is unjustified. Or consider
Lehrer's (1990) case of Truetemp, who, without knowing it, has a
chip implanted in his head that produces very precise and highly
accurate beliefs about the ambient temperature. Truetemp often gets
temperature beliefs from the operation of the chip, but he has never
checked their correctness. Intuitively, Truetemp's belief that
the temperature is now exactly 47 degrees is not justified.
Reliabilism seems to yield the wrong result, justifying too many
beliefs.



There have been a number of attempts to respond to such cases. One
response is defended by Bergmann (2006: ch. 1 and 2) and was already
discussed above in connection with regress problems for access
internalism
 (section 3.1).
 Proponents of the objection often claim that what the cases suggest
is that there must be something the subject is aware of or has access
to that makes a difference to his perspective on the truth or
appropriateness of the belief. Bergmann argues that this requirement,
as tempting or intuitive as it may be, leads to serious regress
problems. (For some replies on behalf of internalism, see Rogers and
Matheson 2011, Hasan 2011, and Fales 2014.)



Many others attempt to accommodate these intuitions in some way.
Goldman (1986) argues that in the cases described it is natural to
think that subjects like Norman do have defeaters available, and this
explains our intuition to regard them as unjustified. However, many,
including some other reliabilists, think it is easy to further specify
or amend the cases to ensure that the defeaters are not available
(Lyons 2009: 123-4). Some accept a modest form of internalism,
introducing a relatively weak access requirement, e.g., that the
subject must have an experience or accessible mental state that is in
fact a reliable way to arrive at beliefs, though the subject need not
have access to the reliability of the experience (Alston 1989).
However, there seem to be many possible cases, including versions of
the cases of Norman and Truetemp, where these conditions are satisfied
but the intuition is the same; we might suppose for example that some
phenomenological sensation, like some unusual sort of itch, headache,
or olfactory sensation, is in fact a highly reliable indicator of the
truth of their beliefs regarding the whereabouts of the President or
the ambient temperature. This intuitively makes no difference when
they are unaware that it is reliable (see Lyons 2009: 125).



A more recent attempt to respond to the Norman and Truetemp cases adds
a restriction for basic or foundational beliefs: they must be
perceptual beliefs, beliefs produced by a "perceptual
system" (see Lyons 2009: ch. 4, for more on what counts as a
perceptual system). Lyons (2009: ch. 5) argues that the original
Norman case doesn't specify whether the belief is a product of a
perceptual system, and in the Truetemp case it is the product of an
implanted chip and not a perceptual system; he also argues that once
we change the details to make the beliefs the result of perceptual
systems the intuitions seem to change. For example, imagine that
Norman\* is like Norman except that he belongs to an alien species all
members of which have clairvoyant abilities, thanks to their evolved
perceptual organs and reliable processes of information transfer.
Lyons claims that, intuitively, someone like Norman\*'s belief
that the President is in New York is justified, even if Norman\* is not
aware of the existence or reliability of such processes.



Just as the cases of Norman and Truetemp are designed to show that
reliabilism makes getting foundational justification too easy, other,
similar cases seem to show that reliabilism make getting
*nonfoundational* justification too easy. Suppose, for example,
that while you are asleep a group of logician-neuroscientists implant
a device in your head that takes some of your highly reliable
foundational beliefs (say, introspective or perceptual beliefs) as
input and responds by selecting at random from a list of complex
theorems of logic and producing a belief in that theorem. Intuitively,
such beliefs are not justified despite their high degree of
reliability. (This example is taken from Lyons 2009: 126). One
intuitive diagnosis is that the relation between the output beliefs
and input beliefs is not evidential or inferential, or the process by
which the output beliefs are generated is not an evidential or
inferential one. The challenge for the reliabilist who wants to avoid
saying that such beliefs are justified, and avoid adding internalist
constraints, is to provide a better account of inferential processes.
To retain its externalism, the account must not have good inference
depend on awareness of or access to the connection between
propositions believed.


### 7.2 A Challenge to Necessity: The New Evil Demon Problem



The objections discussed above challenge the sufficiency of the
externalist's proposed conditions for justification. However,
even if the above counterexamples to sufficiency are met, we might
question whether the externalist's conditions capture something
essential to or necessary for foundational justification, or for the
justification of other beliefs on the basis of foundational ones. Is
unconditional, belief-independent reliability, for example, really
necessary for justification at the foundational level? And is
conditional, belief-dependent reliability really necessary for the
justification of other beliefs?



The "new evil demon problem" (Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen
1984) challenges the claim that externalist conditions like
reliability really are necessary. Suppose that there is a subject that
is just like you in all internal respects, except that while your
beliefs are (let's assume) reliably produced, your twin's
or counterpart's are not, for his or her beliefs are produced by
a powerful deceiving demon. Intuitively, your twin is no less
justified than you are. But given that your twin's beliefs are
not reliable, the reliabilist must say that your twin's beliefs
are not justified.



Various responses have been proposed. Some see no significant problem
with denying that the evil demon victim is justified. If this is not a
blanket rejection of the appeal to intuitions, it would help to
account for the intuitions in some way, and some responses that appeal
to an ambiguity in "justification" could be understood as
doing just that. For example, Goldman (1988) says that the
counterpart's belief is "weakly justified" in the
sense that the belief, though formed by an unreliable process, is one
the subject is epistemically responsible or blameless for having, but
the belief is not "strongly justified" in the sense that
involves reliability. This does not seem to be adequate, for
intuitively, there is something positive about the deceived
counterpart's situation that is not captured by saying that he
is epistemically responsible or blameless. A subject who reasons in
accordance with principles that are horribly defective in ways he
cannot detect may have tried his best and be as epistemically
blameless as an evil demon victim who attends carefully to his
experiences and follows good principles of reasoning, but
there's something clearly positive about the latter's
epistemic situation that goes beyond epistemic blamelessness (see Audi
1993: 28, and Pryor 2001: 117 for discussion of this point). Some
externalists like Bach (1985) and Engel (1992) posit a similar sort of
ambiguity between doxastic and personal justification, i.e., between a
*belief's* being justified and a *person's*
being justified in holding the belief, so that the demon victim is
justified in believing as he does, but his beliefs are not justified.
Kvanvig and Menzel (1990) object that a person's being justified
in believing something entails that their belief is justified, so that
the distinction cannot help with the problem, but Littlejohn (2009)
argues that there is no such entailment, that the distinction between
personal and doxastic justification is coherent and well-motivated,
and that it can help with the new evil demon problem.



Rather than simply deny the intuition, or explain it away by positing
an ambiguity, a number of reliabilists attempt to accommodate the
intuition by amending the conditions for justification. An earlier
response by Goldman (1986) attempts to defend "normal worlds
reliabilism" according to which a subject's belief is
justified if the process producing the belief is reliable in normal
worlds, where a "normal world" is, roughly, a world where
our general beliefs about the actual world are true. It is no surprise
that Goldman himself was quick to give this up. One obvious worry with
this response is that it rules out even the possibility that
"abnormal" processes like clairvoyance be justified.
Another is that it rules out the possibility that our general beliefs
about the world are unjustified (Pollock and Cruz 1999: 115). More
recently, some have suggested more sophisticated amendments to the
conditions or to the sort of reliability required so as to accommodate
the intuition while avoiding the problems of normal worlds reliabilism
(see Comesana 2002; Majors and Sawyer 2005; Henderson and
Horgan 2006).


## 8. The Problem of Easy Knowledge



We end by presenting the "problem of easy knowledge" that
has been raised against both internalist and externalist alternatives
to classical foundationalism (see Cohen 2002 for an initial
formulation of the problem). The problem as presented there has two
main forms. The first involves cases of deductive closure. Suppose, to
use an example from Cohen (2002), that I am looking to acquire a red
table for my room and do not want to end up with a table that only
looks red--e.g., a white table illuminated by red lights. Suppose
that upon looking at a particular table I find that it seems red to
me. If phenomenal conservatism is true, then I can arrive at
knowledge, or at least justified belief, by the following simple
inference:


1. This table is red. (Formed on the basis of perception.)
2. If this table is red then it is not a white table illuminated by
red lights.
3. So, this table is not a white table illuminated by red
lights.



The same goes for the following inference:


1. I have a hand. (Formed on the basis of a perception.)
2. If I have a hand, then I am not a handless brain in a vat being
fed illusory experiences of hands.
3. So, I am not a handless brain in a vat being fed illusory
experiences of hands.



The problem is that it seems implausible that I could come to be
justified in believing--let alone know--that the table is
not a white table illuminated by red lights *merely* on the
basis of its looking or seeming to be red. Of course, I may and often
do have independent reasons to trust that the colors of tables are
normally the way they look (colored lights are rare, I don't
notice any such lights, etc.), and the above argument makes no mention
of that. But given phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, a perceptual
seeming alone would confer justification for beliefs of the form (1)
in the absence of defeaters, whether or not one had good independent
reasons to take the seeming to be trustworthy. Similarly, given
reliabilism, a reliable perceptual process alone would confer
justification for beliefs of form (1) in the absence of defeaters. The
same applies to the second inference: it is implausible that I could
come to be justified in believing that I am not a handless
brain-in-a-vat that merely seems to have hands on the basis of a
perception or perceptual seeming that I have hands.



It is difficult to see how these views can deny that (3) could be
justified in this way. Let's make this explicit: suppose that in
each case (1) is indeed noninferentially justified for me on the basis
of the corresponding seeming or reliable perceptual process, that I
know the obvious entailment (2) a priori, and that on the basis of
this I infer (3). Suppose also that we accept the following
intuitively plausible principle of closure: if *S* is justified
in believing that *P*, knows that *P* entails that
*Q*, and infers on the basis of this that *Q*, then
*S* is justified in believing that *Q*. (This is a
principle that phenomenal conservatives and dogmatists themselves tend
to accept. A few externalists, such as Dretske (1970) and Nozick
(1981) deny the closure principle at work in the objection, but many
externalists are reluctant to deny that something like it holds, for
they do not want to deny that we could be justified in inferring (3)
from (1).) It then follows that I am justified in believing (3). The
objector who uses this against phenomenal conservatism or reliabilism
takes the lesson here to be that mere seemings or reliable processes
(respectively) cannot be a source of foundational or noninferential
justification. Justification can't be that easy.



The problem of easy knowledge (or easy justification) comes in a
second form as well: phenomenal conservatism and reliabilism allow one
to acquire justification in the reliability of one's perceptual
appearances in a way that appears to be illegitimate: by relying on
those very appearances themselves. If phenomenal conservatism is true,
then I can arrive at knowledge or at least justified belief in the
reliability of my apparent perceptions in the following way:



1. *P*. (Formed on the basis of a perceptual seeming that
*P*)
2. It seems to me that *P*. (Formed by introspection)
3. *Q*. (Formed on the basis of a perceptual seeming that
*Q*)
4. It seems to me that *Q*. (Formed by introspection)
5. etc...



Therefore (probably), my perceptual seemings are true.




Given some plausible principle of justification by induction, I can
infer from the premises that my perceptual seemings are (probably)
reliable. The problem is that it is intuitively implausible that I
could come to acquire justification for the reliability of my seemings
by relying on the very seemings whose reliability I am attempting to
justify. But it's not clear how the phenomenal conservative can
deny that this is a legitimate way to acquire justification in the
reliability of one's seemings.



Externalists also seem vulnerable to the second form of the problem of
easy knowledge. They must apparently allow that a circular
track-record argument could provide justification for belief in the
reliability or trustworthiness of fundamental sources of belief. For
example, the reliabilist can rely on perception to justify the
reliability of perception, memory to justify the reliability of
memory. And it seems implausible that one could acquire justification
for the reliability of such sources in this way (see Vogel 2008b for
an argument against reliabilism along these lines).



One possible reply is to grant that such arguments are
question-begging and epistemically useless if presented to someone who
doubts the reliability or trustworthiness of such seemings or apparent
perceptions, but hold that it can still provide a subject who lacks
that doubt with justification. While the argument is question-begging
against the skeptic, that is no reason to deny that one could, in the
absence of defeaters, acquire knowledge or justification on the basis
of such arguments (Pryor 2004; Markie 2005; Bergmann 2008). However,
some object that such arguments remain intuitively
problematic--the arguments seem not to justify at all, whether or
not they should persuade skeptics. (Cohen 2005; see also Vogel 2008a:
539-42, for further examples of cases for which dogmatism allows
subjects to have justification that they really lack).



One might begin to wonder whether the problem of easy knowledge is a
problem for *all* foundationalist views if it is a problem for
any. Indeed, some have argued that classical foundationalists are in
no better a position than phenomenal conservatives and externalists
with respect to the problem, for they too will have to allow that one
could rely on acquaintance with facts to justify the existence and
trustworthiness of acquaintance. First, consider a parallel case of
deductive closure:



1. This is a pain. (Formed on the basis of acquaintance)
2. If this is a pain, then it is not a mere itch that I am mistaking
for a pain.
3. So, this is not a mere itch that I am mistaking for a pain.



And a parallel case of circularity:


1. *P*. (Formed on the basis of my acquaintance with the fact
that *P*)
2. I am acquainted with the fact that *P*. (Formed on the
basis of my acquaintance with the fact that I am acquainted with the
fact that *P*)
3. *Q*. (Formed on the basis of my acquaintance with the fact
that *Q*)
4. I am acquainted with the fact that *Q*. (Formed on the
basis of my acquaintance with the fact that I am acquainted with the
fact that *Q*.)
5. etc.



Therefore (probably), acquaintance is a source of true beliefs.




Classical foundationalists might respond that the problem is not one
of permitting some source to justify propositions about itself or its
epistemic credentials. The problem is that some alleged sources make
the justification implausibly easy. Classical foundationalism does
not; the intuition that the knowledge or justification acquired is
implausibly easy or unsatisfying in the argument forms just presented
is absent or at least much weaker (see Fumerton 2006). The problem
that classical foundationalism faces is that it makes justification
too hard, not too easy.