Richard Foley

Descartes, and many of the other great epistemologists of the modern period, looked to epistemology to put science and intellectual inquiry generally on a secure foundation. Epistemology’s role was to provide assurances of the reliability of properly conducted inquiry. Indeed, its role was nothing less than to be czar of the sciences and of intellectual inquiry in general. This conception of epistemology is now almost universally regarded as overly grandiose. Nonetheless, Descartes and the other great epistemologists of the modern era were not completely mistaken. Epistemology does have a foundational role to play, but not that of a guarantor of knowledge. Its role, rather, is the less flamboyant but nonetheless theoretically crucial one of providing a philosophically respectable foundation for a general theory of rationality.

In epistemology Chisholm was a defender of FOUNDATIONALISM [S]. He asserted that any proposition that it is justified for a person to believe gets at least part of its justification from basic propositions, which are themselves justified but not by anything else. Contingent propositions are basic insofar as they correspond to selfpresenting states of the person, which for Chisholm are states such that whenever one is in the state and believes that one is in it, one’s belief is maximally justified. There are two types of self-presenting states, intentional states (ways of thinking, hoping, fearing, desiring, wondering, intending, etc.) and sensory states (ways of being appeared to by the various senses). A noncontingent proposition is basic if understanding it is sufficient for understanding that it is true and also sufficient for making it justified. “2+3=5” and “If Jones is ill and Smith is away, then Jones is ill” are examples of such propositions, says Chisholm. Self-presentation and understanding are among the basic sources of epistemic justification, but according to Chisholm there are other sources as well. The most important of these other sources are perception, memory, belief coupled with a lack of negative coherence (e.g., no inconsistencies among the propositions believed), and belief coupled with positive coherence (i.e., mutual support among the proposition believed). For each of these sources, Chisholm forwards an epistemic principle that describes the conditions under which the source generates justification. Despite his thinking that there are many sources of epistemic justification, Chisholm is rightly regarded as a foundationalist because all the sources are such that they can produce justified beliefs only because some propositions are justified basically. For example, Chisholm’s principles concerning perception and memory make reference to propositions that are justified because they correspond to self-presenting states. In the case of perception, the relevant states are sensings, and for memory the relevant states are beliefs, in particular, beliefs to the effect that one remembers something..

A common complaint against contemporary epistemology is that its issues are too rarified and, hence, of little relevance for the everyday assessments we make of each other=s beliefs. The notion of epistemic rationality focuses on a specific goal, that of now having accurate and comprehensive beliefs, whereas our everyday assessments of beliefs are sensitive to the fact that we have an enormous variety of goals and needs, intellectual as well as nonintellectual. Indeed, our everyday assessments often have a quasi-ethical dimension; we want to know, for example, whether someone has been responsible, or at least non-negligent, in forming opinions. Nevertheless, epistemology, properly conceived, is relevant to our commonplace intellectual concerns. Epistemic rationality is an idealized notion, but its idealized character makes it suitable to serve as a theoretical anchor for other notions of rationality, including notions that are less idealized and, hence, potentially more directly relevant to our everyday assessments.