Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), , language: English, abstract: In this essay, I will present and defend a version of modest foundationalism concerning epistemic justification. In order to defend it I will consider some possible objections coming from the competing positions of classical foundationalism and coherentism. However, as both of these approaches involve serious difficulties, I will counter these objections and show the advantages of modest foundationalism. At the end, it will, hopefully, have become clear that a modest foundationalism is able to integrate also coherentist as well as externalist intuitions to a certain degree, which enables it to be a far more plausible position than any of the extremes.
I have to note an important decision that precedes my critical examination of these opposing theories and my plea for modest foundationalism. This inquiry is based on the meta-epistemological point of view according to which the task of a theory of epistemic justification is a descriptive one, in a sense analogous to the distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics drawn by Peter Strawson in the introduction of his Individuals. Therefore, I take it to be one of the tasks of epistemology to explicate the standards underlying our ordinary use of the word justified . This preliminary decision concerning the goal and method of epistemology determines the evaluation both of classical foundationalism and coherentism in the following discussion.
