Peter Klein

There is a rapprochement available between infinitism and foundationalism. An infinitist will hold: (a) that _any_ belief is more fully doxastically justified when it is reason-enhanced and (b) that full doxastic justification is required for a belief to rise to the level of knowledge—the most highly prized form of true belief. The foundationalist will claim (c) that there are _some_ epistemically privileged basic beliefs which do not require reasons in order to be doxastically justified. Those three claims might seem incompatible, but once it is recognized that what was taken for granted in one context requires reasons in another context, a rapprochement is possible because it can be seen that foundationalism is correct that there are some privileged basic beliefs and infinitism is correct that the privilege is only conditional.

The purpose of the chapter is to show that the defeasibility theory of knowledge provides the best solution to the most philosophically interesting way of characterizing the Gettier Problem. I will examine Gettier’s presentation of the problem in order to show that the principles that Gettier used to motivate the problem require some important corrections and, even with those corrections, the hard task remains, namely to make clear how fallible reasoning can result in real knowledge by eluding epistemic luck. I argue that various etiology of beliefs theories of knowledge (tracking theories, safety views, reliabilism, and virtue theories) do not provide a good basis for characterizing epistemic luck and depend upon highly speculative empirical claims. In addition, I will argue that among evidentialist theories (defeasibility theories, Dretske’s and Foley’s views) only a well-constructed defeasibility theory can correctly and informatively solve the Gettier Problem.

There are many things that could be wrong with foundationalism. For example, some have claimed that a so‐called basic belief cannot be both 1) a reason for non‐basic beliefs and 2) such that it cannot be provided with at least prima facie justification.1 If something is a reason, they say, then that something has to be a proposition (or sufficiently proposition‐like) and if it is a proposition (or sufficiently proposition‐like), then it is the kind of thing that requires a reason in order to be even prima facie justified.2 Another reason that some give for rejecting normative foundationalism is that it leads directly to skepticism.3 There is no way, they claim, to move from so‐called basic propositions (typically given as first person introspective reports) to “external world” propositions by employing normatively acceptable principles of reasoning.4 Still others have thought that the invention of a nonrea‐soned reason was as ad hoc as the invention of an unmoved mover.5.

“Real knowledge,” as I use the term, is the most highly prized form of true belief sought by an epistemic agent. This paper argues that defeasible infinitism provides a good way to characterize real knowledge and it shows how real knowledge can arise from fallible justification. Then, I argue that there are two ways of interpreting Ernest Sosa's account of real knowledge as belief that is aptly formed and capable of being fully defended. On the one hand, if beliefs are aptly formed only if they have a specific causal etiology, namely that they are efficiently caused fully or partially by virtuous characteristics of the epistemic agent, then Sosa's account falls prey to what I call the problem of the Hazard of Empirical Disconfirmation. The HED problem applies to all forms of causal accounts of real knowledge and is simply that as we gain more empirical knowledge about the causal origins of our true beliefs that are the most highly prized we will discover that they do not always satisfy the required efficient causal constraints. Bluntly put, having sufficiently good reasons for our beliefs might not require that the beliefs have the requisite efficient causal etiology. On the other hand, there is a way of interpreting Sosa's views that does not include an efficient causal prerequisite. That interpretation makes Sosa's account of real knowledge almost identical to defeasible infinitism but expressed in an alternate vocabulary. Such a view is not subject to the HED problem and it can solve the deep problem in epistemology, namely how to get epistemically certain knowledge from fallible justification.

In Metaepistemology and Skepticism (Rowman & Littlefield:\n1995), Richard Fumerton defends foundationalism. As part of\nthe defense he rejects infinitism--the view that holds that\nthe solution to the problem of the regress of justificatory\nreasons is that the reasons are infinitely many and\nnonrepeating. I examine some of those arguments and attempt\nto show that they are not really telling against (at least\nsome versions of) infinitism. Along the way I present some\nobjections to his account of inferential justification