Foundationalism is a view about the structure of (epistemic)justification or knowledge. The foundationalist’s thesis inshort is that (a) there are some “basic” or“foundational” beliefs that have a positive epistemicstatus—e.g., they count as justified or asknowledge—without depending on any other beliefs for thisstatus, and (b) any other beliefs with a positive epistemic statusmust depend, ultimately, on foundational beliefs for this status.

Many interesting and difficult questions can be raised about therelation between justification and knowledge, including whetherknowledge should be analyzed in terms of justification, asepistemologists traditionally seem to have thought, or whetherknowledge is prior to or independent of justification.^[1] In what follows we will concentrate on foundationalism aboutjustification, though much of what we say also applies tofoundationalism about knowledge.

A little reflection suggests that the vast majority of thepropositions that we know or are justified in believing have thatstatus only because we know or are justified in believing otherpropositions. So, for example, I am justified in believing that thereis at least one dog in our neighborhood, because I am justified inbelieving that my next door neighbor has a dog; I am justified inbelieving that our garbage will get picked up tomorrow, because I amjustified in believing that tomorrow is Tuesday and that our garbagegets picked up every Tuesday; and I am justified in believing thatthere is going to be at least some rain in the next week, because I amjustified in believing that the forecast calls for a good deal ofrain, and that forecasts are almost always right when it comes tosimilar short-term forecasts in this area. And the dependence seems tobe inferential in nature: in each case, I am justified in believingthe former only because I have inferred it, or at least am able toinfer it, from the latter. Foundationalists about justification wantto contrast my foundationally justified belief (knowledge) with a kindof justified belief (knowledge) that doesn’t involve the havingof other justified beliefs (knowledge). There is no standardterminology for what we shall henceforth refer to as foundationaljustification (knowledge).^[2]

We just noted that the epistemic dependence of one belief on anotherin the above examples seems to be a kind ofinferentialdependence. Epistemologists do tend to assume that all epistemicdependence between beliefs is inferential. But perhaps not allrelations of epistemic or justificatory dependence between beliefs areinferential. When I form an introspective belief about a conscious oroccurrent belief of mine -- e.g., my belief that I believe it’sraining outside -- perhaps (on some views) my second-orderbelief’s justification depends on my having the conscious beliefthat it is raining. Many would take such introspective beliefs to be“foundational”, akin to my justification for beliefs aboutmy own present experiences. One way to make sense of this is that evenif such beliefs depend for their justification on the first-orderbeliefs, they are foundational in the sense of not dependingpositively on theepistemic or justificatory status of otherbeliefs. (Notice that my belief that I believe that it is rainingoutside doesn’t depend for its justification on whether I’mjustified in believing that it’s raining outside.) This suggeststhat we understand foundational beliefs as those that do not depend onthe epistemic status of other beliefs, and non-foundational beliefs asbeliefs that do so depend. And if we think that any dependence of abelief on the epistemic status of another belief must beinferential, we get the neat result that foundational beliefsdo not, but non-foundational beliefs do, depend for theirjustification on inferential relations to other beliefs. But is itpossible for a belief to depend on the epistemic status of otherbeliefs, but in a non-inferential way? We will briefly illustrate howsome accounts might accept the possibility of non-inferentialepistemic dependence between beliefs further below, when we discusscoherentism and reliabilism. However, aside from such cases, we willtreat “foundational/nonfoundational” justification and the“noninferential/inferential” justification asinterchangeable.

Epistemologists commonly distinguish betweendoxastic andpropositional justification. Very roughly, one haspropositional justification when onehas justification (e.g.,some reason or evidence) for belief in a proposition. One has doxasticjustification when one not only has justification to believe aproposition but alsobelieves the proposition and believes iton the basis of the justification one has. This distinctionapplies to foundational and non-foundational beliefs: beingfoundationally/non-foundationally justified in believing that Prequires having some foundational/non-foundational justification forP, and believing that P on the basis of this justification. (Whilethis is to understand doxastic justification in terms of propositionaljustification, some prefer to go the other way round, and understandhaving justification in terms of being in a position to acquiredoxastic justification. For a helpful discussion, see Turri 2010.) Forease of exposition, much of our discussion is put in terms that mostnaturally refer to doxastic justification—e.g., “justifiedbelief”, “being justified in believing”. However,even when we use such terms, we focus on propositional justification(which is required for doxastic justification) and assume that theother conditions involved in believing on a proper basis aresatisfied. (For more on the basing requirement, see the entry onthe epistemic basing relation.)

• 1. Regress Arguments for Foundationalism
• 2. The Classical Analysis of Foundational Justification
  • 2.1 Foundational Justification as Infallible Belief
  • 2.2 Foundational Justification as Infallible Justification
• 3. Objections to Classical Foundationalism
  • 3.1 Regress Problems for Access Internalism
  • 3.2 The Sellarsian Dilemma
  • 3.3 Doubts about Correspondence and Acquaintance
  • 3.4 The Threat of Skepticism
• 4. Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism
• 5. Objections to Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism
  • 5.1 The Cognitive Penetration Objection
• 6. Externalist Versions of Foundationalism
• 7. Objections to Externalist Versions of Foundationalism
  • 7.1 Challenges to Sufficiency: Norman and Truetemp
  • 7.2 A Challenge to Necessity: The New Evil Demon Problem
• 8. The Problem of Easy Knowledge
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Regress Arguments for Foundationalism

A foundationally justified belief (henceforth simply:‘foundational belief’) is one that does not depend on anyother beliefs for its justification. According to foundationalism, anyjustified belief must either be foundational or depend for itsjustification, 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 thingsknown), and that some knowledge must be “independent ofdemonstration” (Posterior Analytics, I.3). Many of themedieval philosophers seemed in agreement with Aristotle, holding thatall 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 securefoundation of indubitable truths (see the entry onDescartes’s epistemology). Many other philosophers of the early modern period, including Locke,Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, all seemed to acceptfoundationalism as well, despite disagreeing about much else. When anargument was implicitly or explicitly offered for the view, it wasmost often some version of the now famous epistemic regress argument.(See Aristotle’sPosterior Analytics, I.3, for an earlyversion of this argument.) Before presenting the argument we shoulddiscuss a principle it depends on.

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

To be justified in believingP on the basis ofE onemust be justified in believingE.

Now consider another example. Suppose I claim to be justified inbelieving that Fred will die shortly and offer as my justificationthat a certain line across his palm (his infamous“lifeline”) is short. Rightly skeptical, you wonder thistime what reason I have for believing that palm lines have anythingwhatsoever to do with length of life. As soon as you become satisfiedthat I have no justification for supposing that there is any kind ofprobabilistic connection between the character of this line andFred’s life, you will again reject my claim to have a justifiedbelief about Fred’s impending demise. That suggests that wemight expand our principle to include a second clause.

Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ):
To be justified in believingP on the basis ofE onemust be (1) justified in believingE, and (2) justified inbelieving thatE makes probableP.

One might note that in the palm reading example there actually is nosignificant, objective probability between the length of Fred’sso-called “life-line” and his life span. Perhaps this iswhy my belief that he is going to die soon is unjustified, and notthat I don’t satisfy clause (2). Against this, the proponent ofPIJ might ask us to consider an amendment to the case. Suppose that,surprisingly, it turns out that thereis 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 thereis such a connection. This possibility seems coherent: the fact thatthe relevant objective probabilistic relation obtains is notsufficient for one to have justification for believing that itobtains. But then, intuitively, I remain unjustified in believing thatFred is going to die soon. Or consider the possibility that I believeFred will die because he has just ingested a lot of hemlock, and whenyou ask me why I think hemlock would lead to death, I say thatI’m not sure, that it is just a hunch on my part that it isgoing to kill him. Again, if I lack justification for believing thathemlock is a deadly poison, or that it is likely to have this effect,then intuitively, I lack justification for believing that Fred willdie soon. What more, then, is needed? A natural though controversialsuggestion is that one must satisfy something like clause(2).^[3]

With the first clause of PIJ, one can present a relativelystraightforward epistemic regress argument for foundationalism. Thatclause basically says that one cannot acquire justification for abelief by inferring it from an unjustified belief. It also seems thatone cannot acquire justification for a belief by way of a circular,inferential justification—one cannot rely even in part on aproposition as a premise in an inference in support of that veryproposition. We seem left with two options: allow that some beliefshave justification without depending on other beliefs, or suppose thatall justification is inferential. If all justification is inferential,then for someoneS to be justified in believing somepropositionP,S must be in a position tolegitimately infer it from some other propositionE1. ButE1 could justifyS in believingP only ifS were justified in believingE1, and if alljustification were inferential,S would have to infer it (orat least be able to infer it) from some other proposition justifiablybelieved,E2, a proposition which in turn would have to beinferred from some other proposition justifiably believed,E3, and so on,ad infinitum. But finite beingscannot complete an infinitely long chain of reasoning. And so, if alljustification were inferential, no one could be justified in believinganything at all to any extent whatsoever.

This, however, is not yet an argument for foundationalism as much asan argument against what we might call“inferentialism”—the view that all justification isinferential—for it leaves open the skeptical position that weare not, and could not be, justified in believing anything at all,whether by inference or otherwise. This most radical of allskepticisms seems absurd (it entails that one couldn’t even bejustified in believing it). But, strictly speaking, none of this showsthat we have non-inferential justification for any of our beliefs, oreven that non-inferential justification is possible. At best, it showsonly that,if justification is possible, orif weare or could be justified in believing anything at all,thenthat justification must take a foundationalist structure. Theepistemic regress argumentfor foundationalism thus needs anadditional premise, though one that all but the most radical skepticswould accept: that epistemic justification is in principle possiblefor beings like us.

If we accept the more controversial second clause of PIJ, the loomingregresses proliferate. Not only mustS above be justified inbelievingE1,S must also be justified in believingthatE1 makes likelyP, a proposition he would haveto infer (if there are no foundations) from some other propositionF1, which he would have to infer fromF2, which hewould have to infer fromF3, and so onad infinitum.ButS would also need to be justified in believing thatF1 does in fact make likely thatE1 makes likelyP, a proposition he would need to infer from some otherpropositionG1, which he would need to infer from some otherpropositionG2, and so on. And he would need to infer thatG1 does indeed make likely thatF1 makes likely thatE1 makes likelyP, and so on. Withoutnoninferentially justified beliefs, it would seem that we would needto complete an infinite number of infinitely long chains of reasoningin order to be justified in believing anything!

PIJ is controversial, especially its second clause. It is important tonote that either clause of the principle can be used by itself togenerate the allegedly vicious regress for the philosopher who rejectsfoundations. It is the two clauses combined that are supposed topresent the anti-foundationalist with an infinite number of viciousregresses. A number of philosophers (among them foundationalists)would argue that the second clause of PIJ confuses levels of epistemicquestions. It is far too strong to require someone to have a justifiedbelief in a probabilistic connection between available evidence andthe conclusion reached on the basis of that evidence. Such arequirement is at best plausible for having second-leveljustification, justification for the epistemic belief that one has aninferentially justified belief. In responding to a challenge presentedto one’s having an inferentially justified belief inPon the basis ofE, one might find oneself searching forjustification to support the claim thatE makes probableP, but that is only because in the context of the challengeone is trying to support or justify the claim that one has a justifiedbelief. A similar claim might be made with respect to clause (1) ofthe principle, although it is more difficult to generate thesupporting intuition.

In any event, the careful foundationalist is certainly notconfused about level-distinctions. The foundationalist whosupports PIJ is claiming that a necessary condition forsomeone’s having an inferentially justified belief inPbased onE is that the person have both a justified belief inE and a justified belief in the proposition thatEmakesP probable. It is simply not enough thatE istrue or thatE does in fact make probableP. Ouroriginal examples used to support PIJ would seem to reinforce thatconclusion. Even if there happened to be some bizarre connectionbetween palm lines and length of life, for example, the person who hasno reason to believe that such a connection exists has nojustification for conclusions reached about length of life based onthis anatomical feature of people. Similarly, even though there is infact a connection between ingesting hemlock and dying, a person whohad no reason to believe that ingesting hemlock would bring aboutdeath has no justification for believing that someone (who has justingested hemlock) is about to die. Some have attempted to defend aweaker version of the principle, one that replaces the second clauseof PIJ with the condition that the subject have some sort ofnon-doxastic awareness or appreciation of the connection--e.g., thatone be acquainted with the connection or that it appear to one thatthe connection holds (e.g., Tucker 2012).

There are responses to the charge of vicious regress facinganti-foundationalists. One is to deny the premise that circularinferences are vicious or no good: granted, one can’teffectively convince someone who is skeptical of the truth ofP that it is true by relying on an inference that ultimatelycomes back toP, but perhaps circular inferences can providejustification despite being dialectically ineffective (i.e.,ineffective in persuading others). Still, it seems odd to say that onecould justifyP by use of an inference fromP .After all, ifP is already justified, the subject does notneed to use it to justifyP; and if it is not justified then,in line with the first clause of PIJ, one could not use it to justifyP. More plausibly, the anti-foundationalist might reject thepresupposition that all justification is linear or one-directional,that it flows from one belief to another, or is inherited by a belieffrom others. According to coherentism about epistemic justification,beliefs are justified “holistically” rather than in alinear, piecemeal way. Each belief is justified by virtue of itscoherence with the rest of what one believes—in other words, byvirtue of belonging to a coherent set or web of beliefs. Thecoherentist avoids the appearance of vicious circularity by insistingthat one needn’tfirst have justification for believingthe other propositions in one’s belief system. The coherencetheorist’s response to the argument for foundationalism is, ofcourse, only as plausible as the coherence theory of justification(seecoherentist theories of epistemic justification).

Some forms of coherentism might complicate our taxonomy. According tosome coherentists, a belief can depend for its justification on howwell it “coheres” with the rest of one’s beliefs,andif this coherence isnot understood in terms ofactual or available inference, then they would allow for dependent butnon-inferentially justified belief. Some beliefs may count asfoundational in the sense of not depending on inference from otherbeliefs for justification, while still depending on other beliefs.

One other response is to embrace infinitism and hold that an infiniteregress is not necessarily vicious or problematic. Infinitism has afew defenders (e.g., Peter Klein (1998) and more recently, Fantl(2003) and Aikin (2011)). The infinitist accepts the need to beable to supply non-circular justification for believing whatwe do, but argues that given the complexity of the human mind and itscapacity to entertain and justifiably believe an infinite number ofpropositions, there is nothing vicious about the relevant regresses weface. There is no reason to suppose that we would be unable to justifyevery proposition we believe by appeal to some other differentproposition which we justifiably believe. Infinitism is a view thatshould be seriously considered, particularly once one realizes thatone not only can but arguably does have an infinite number ofjustified beliefs (e.g., that 2 is greater than 1, that 3 is greaterthat 1, and so on.). For some further discussion of infinitism andchallenges to it, see Klein and Turri (2014).

Some don’t find the regress argument to be the best argument forthe existence of foundational justification; as with any argument byelimination, it depends on whether the alternatives eliminated reallyare untenable. Pryor (2013b), for example, claims that the bestargument comes from considering examples. I believe that I feel tired,that I have a headache, that I intend to get a glass of water, thatblack is not white; and in each case, it doesn’t seem that myjustification is mediated by any other proposition. This supports theclaim that there are foundational beliefs, though it does not speakdirectly 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 akind of justification that does not depend on the having ofjustification for other beliefs. They nevertheless disagree radicallyamong themselves as to how to understand foundational justification.In the latter part of the 20^th century, the rise ofexternalist epistemologies has generated even more fundamentallydifferent versions of foundationalism. It will not be possible tosurvey all of the strikingly different analyses or theories that havebeen offered of foundational justification. In what follows we willexamine a few of the more prominent versions of classical andcontemporary internalist and externalist foundationalism.

2.1 Foundational Justification as Infallible Belief

Descartes is often taken to be the paradigm of a classicalfoundationalist. Determined to build knowledge on appropriate andsecure foundations, he seemed to want to identify foundationalknowledge with infallible belief (though there is anotherinterpretation that we’ll turn to in the next section, one thatidentifies foundational knowledge with infalliblejustification). Implicitly or explicitly, others seemed tofollow his lead by restricting foundationally justified beliefs tobeliefs that cannot be mistaken. Following Lehrer (1974: 81) we mightformulate the following definition of infallible belief:S’s belief thatP att is infallibleifS’s believingP att entails^[4] thatP is true.

As Lehrer and others have pointed out, it is far from clear that thisconcept of infallible belief has much relevance to an attempt tounderstand the epistemic concept of foundational justification. Thefirst and most striking problem involves necessary truths. Everynecessary truth is entailed by every proposition, and thus if I happento believe a necessary truth,P, that I believePwill entail thatP is true. Thus, by the above definition mybelief thatP will be infallible--and so, on the presentaccount, foundationally justified--wheneverP is a necessarytruth even ifP is something exceedingly complicated that Ican barely even comprehend.

Furthermore, a foundation of knowledge and justified belief restrictedto infallible beliefs (as defined above) would arguably be far toothin to support any sort of substantial epistemic edifice. There are afew contingent propositions that are entailed by the fact that theyare believed. My belief that I exist entails that I exist, that I haveat least one belief, that someone has beliefs, etc. But once we getpast these sorts of “self-referential” propositions,propositions whose very subject matter is encompassed by the fact thatthey are believed, it is hard to come up with uncontroversial examplesof contingent infallible beliefs. Ayer (1956: 19) argues that as longas the belief thatP is one state of affairs andP’s being the case is an entirely different state ofaffairs (not including as a constituent the former) there can be nological absurdity in the supposition that the former could occurwithout 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 footif they seek foundations in logical relations between the mere factthat someone believes some proposition and the proposition’sbeing true. Foundational justification is, after all, a kind ofjustification, and if the impossibility of error is essential tofoundational justification, it may be more plausible to locate thesource of infallibility in a special kind of justification availablein support of a belief. Let us say thatS’s belief isinfallibly justified att whenS’s ground orjustification for believingP att entails the truthofP—in other words, whenS cannot have thatground or justification for believing thatP whilePis false. The suggestion, then, is that a belief is foundationallyjustified only if it is infallibly justified in this sense.

We still need to qualify the entailment in some way to circumvent theproblem discussed earlier. Whenever I have any justification at allfor believing a proposition that turns out to be necessarily true,that justification will entail the necessary truth. But we do not wantjust any sort of justification to yield infallibly justified belief,even if the object of that belief is a necessary truth. This problemis notoriously difficult to solve (see the entry onCertainty for more), but intuitively the solution should have something to dowith the relation between the fact that would make true theproposition entailed and the fact that would make true the propositionthat entails it. More specifically, we could say thatPentails*Q only if the fact that would makeP trueis at least a constituent of the fact that would makeQ true.This suggestion can be considered at best only preliminary since wewill obviously need a more detailed account of facts and theirconstituents. That I have grey hair entails that someone has greyhair, but is my having grey hair a constituent of the fact that issomeone’s having grey hair? There is certainly a sense in whichit is something one can point to in answer to the question “Whatmakes it true that someone has grey hair?” One cannotappropriately point to my having grey hair as something that makes ittrue that two plus two equals four. With some such relation in place,perhaps we can appropriately restrict the class of necessary truths wecan be infallibly justified in believing, and still allow contingenttruths 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 abelief is foundationally justified, in what does the justification forthat belief consist? What is it that distinguishes this belief from mybelief about, say, whether it will rain next week? Somefoundationalists want to locate the foundational justification in thetruth-maker for the proposition believed. What justifies me inbelieving that I’m in pain when I am is the mere fact thatI’m in pain. But again, what is it about my being in pain asopposed to its raining next week which makes it appropriate to claimthat my being in pain justifies me in believing that I’m in painwhile its raining next week doesn’t justify me in believing thatit will rain next week?

It is tempting to think that the foundationalist is better offappealing to some specialrelation that I have to my painwhich makes it unnecessary to look to other beliefs in order tojustify my belief that I’m in pain. It is the fact that I have akind ofaccess to my pain that no one else has that makes mybelief foundationally justified while others must rely on inference inorder to discover that I am in this state. This takes us to anotherclassical version of foundationalism, the acquaintance theory. Perhapsthe best known proponent of an acquaintance theory is Bertrand Russell(1910–11, 1913; for more on the acquaintance theory, see entryonknowledge by acquaintance vs. description). But it takes little imagination to read the view into most of theBritish empiricists. Roughly the view is that what justifiesS in believing that he is in pain is the fact thatSis acquainted with his pain in a way in which he is not acquaintedwith any contingent facts about other people, the physical world, thefuture, and so on. Russell (1910–11) characterizes acquaintanceas a relation ofdirect or immediate awareness, a relation inwhich, 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 themotivation for this, consider inferential beliefs again. A justifiedbelief thatP cannot provide justification for believingevery other proposition it entails, for it might be that theentailment relation is beyond one’s cognitive grasp, or theinference is not something one has made or is even able to make. (Asalready discussed insection 1, reflection on such cases might lead us to accept the second clause ofPIJ.) Similarly, some acquaintance theorists argue that acquaintancewith some fact cannot provide justification for a belief in theabsence 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 shapein my visual field, and also believe (correctly) that I amexperiencing such-and-such a color or shape, but I might actually bereally bad at identifying such specific features and my belief mightbe little more than a lucky guess. Suppose these theorists also accepta correspondence conception of truth according to which, roughly, aproposition is true just in case it corresponds to the facts or to theway the world is; they might add that to be fully justified inbelieving a proposition to be true one must be acquainted not onlywith the fact that makes the proposition true but also with therelation of correspondence that holds between the proposition and thefact. For example, in order to be justified in believing that I amexperiencing fuchsia, I must be acquainted with (or at least be ableto become acquainted with) the “match”, “fit”,or correspondence between my thought or belief that I am experiencingfuchsia and the fact that I am experiencing fuchsia.^[5]

When acquaintance with the fact thatP is part of whatconstitutes my foundational justification for believingP,there is a trivial sense in which my foundational justification isinfallible. I can’t be directly acquainted with the fact thatP while I believeP falsely. However, mostcontemporary foundationalists are fallibilists about foundationaljustification: they hold that one could be foundationally justified inbelieving propositions that are false. It seems plausible that I couldbe justified in believing, for example, that I am experiencing a mildpain when in fact I am experiencing an itch, or that I could bejustified in believing I am experiencing a specific shade of colorwhen I am in fact experiencing a slightly different shade. Even someacquaintance theorists want to allow for some fallible foundations.For example, Fumerton (1995) holds that one can be noninferentiallyjustified in believingP by virtue of being directlyacquainted with a fact very similar to, but ultimately different from,the fact thatP (the fact that makesP true). Suchan acquaintance theory could allow for the possibility of afoundationally justified but false belief thatP. Huemer(2007), Poston (2010), and Tucker (2016) argue, however, thatclassical foundationalists have difficulty accommodating falliblefoundational beliefs. For some replies, see Fumerton (2010 and 2016),and Hasan (2013).

Not all classical foundationalists require acquaintance with thecorrespondence (or some other similar relation) between some thoughtor proposition and a distinct fact for one to have knowledge byacquaintance. For example, according to McGrew (1995, 1998), for anyobject of acquaintance or direct awareness it is possible to form abelief in which a demonstrative concept refers directly to it. Byvirtue of my acquaintance with a painful experience, I can believedirectly of it that it exists, or that the property demonstrated,painfulness, is instantiated. We could express the belief roughly bysaying “I am experiencingthis.” For this kind ofbelief (unlike most other beliefs regarding contingent facts), togenuinely understand or grasp the content of the beliefis tograsp its truth. Such demonstratively formed beliefs are guaranteed tobe 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 isthat one be having just that experience. (McGrew 1995: 90)

Rather than attempt to accommodate fallible foundations, McGrewfollows early classical foundationalists in arguing that infallibilityor infallible justification (what he calls“incorrigibility”) is in fact required for foundationaljustification. Some worry, however, that such foundations, even ifthey are generally available, are too “thin”: that I am“experiencingthis” doesn’t seem to conveyanything about what sort of experience I am having, and it isdifficult to see how we could get from here to justified beliefs thatinvolve categorizing or conceptualizing our experiences in moreinformative ways (see, e.g., Sosa 2003).

3. Objections to Classical Foundationalism

Once the received view, classical foundationalism has come underconsiderable attack in the last few decades. Here we will consider themost prominent objections that target the classical view offoundational beliefs. (For some more objections and discussion, seeentry onknowledge by acquaintance vs. description.)

3.1 Regress Problems for Access Internalism

Laurence BonJour (1985: ch. 4) raised a highly influential objectionto foundationalism (an objection raised before he joined the ranks offoundationalists). The objection presupposed a strong form of what wemight call access internalism. (We discuss the internalist/externalistcontroversy in more detail insection 6 below.) The access internalist argues, roughly, that a feature of abelief or epistemic situation that makes a belief foundationallyjustified for us must be a feature to which we have actual orpotential access. Moreover, we must have access to the fact that thefeature in question is relevant to the truth or probability of what webelieve. Suppose some foundationalist offers an account according towhich a beliefB is foundationally justified only if it hassome characteristicX. BonJour argues that the mere fact thatthe belief hasX could not justify the believer in holdingB. The believer would also need access to the fact thatB hasX and that beliefs of this sort are likely tobe true. But according to the strong access requirement BonJouraccepts, this requires actual or potentialknowledge or justifiedbelief thatB hasX and that beliefs of thissort are likely to be true. SoB would need other justifiedbeliefs for its justification.B’s status as afoundationally justified belief is destroyed.

BonJour presented the objection on the way to developing a coherencetheory of empirical justification. But it ultimately became obviousthat the objection to foundationalism was too strong. Given thestructure of the argument it should become evident that the coherencetheory (and any other theory) would be equally vulnerable to theargument. Just replace “X” with some complicateddescription of beliefs cohering with each other. Coherence ofone’s beliefs would never be sufficient for justification, forone would have to already be justified in believing that one’sbeliefs were coherent and that such coherence makes one’sbeliefs likely to be true. That might suggest to the classicalfoundationalist that strong access internalism is a view to beavoided.

Michael Bergmann (2006: chs. 1 and 2) argues, however, that if toavoid regress we drop the strong access requirements that are so dearto some internalists, we also lose the motivation for the view. AsBergmann sees it, the attraction of internalism is its claim to beable to construe justification in such a way that it gives a subjectwith a justified belief a certain assurance from the subjectiveperspective, an assurance that externalist views (discussed below)don’t offer. According to Bergmann, even acquaintance with truthbearers, truth makers and a correspondence holding between themdoesn’t carry with it assurance unless it is accompanied by ajustified belief that all these relations obtain. And this will takeus again on the road to regress. Bergmann’s challenge is seriousand the traditional acquaintance theorist who rejects the strongaccess requirement will need to convince you that acquaintance withthe correspondence between a fact and a thought that P can make adifference to the subject’s perspective on the truth of Pwithout needing justification for thinking that the fact corresponds toP (see Hasan 2011 for a reply along these lines). Alternatively, theinternalist might attempt to convince you that the regress that comeswith 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 wouldattempt to avoid the regress problem raised in the previous section byappeal to the idea that some things are simply “given” tous, or that we directly “apprehend” or are“acquainted with” them. Inspired by Sellars (1963),BonJour (1978, 1985: ch. 4) presented the following objection toclassical foundationalism, often referred to as the “SellarsianDilemma”. Does the awareness or acquaintance that is the allegedsource of noninferential justification involve the acceptance of aproposition or thought, or at least the categorization of some sensoryitem or the application of some concept to experience? If, on the onehand, the acquaintance or awareness is propositional or conceptual inthis way, then while such acts or episodes of awareness seem capable,in principle, of justifying other beliefs, they would surely need tobe justified themselves. The episode of awareness would involvesomething like the acceptance of a proposition, or the categorizationof experience, and such an attitude or act clearly needs justificationif it is to justify anything else. But then, the allegedlyfoundational belief is not foundational after all. If, on the otherhand, we can regard direct awareness as nonpropositional andnonconceptual, then while these acts or states of awareness do notrequire or even admit of justification they also don’t seemcapable on their own of providing a reason or justification forpropositional items like beliefs. Therefore, the classicalfoundationalist’s acquaintance or direct awareness cannot serveas a foundational source of knowledge or justified belief.

One proposed solution to the dilemma begins by emphasizing thatacquaintance with a fact is not by itself an epistemic relation. Theacquaintance theorist can argue that one has a noninferentiallyjustified belief thatP only when one has the thought thatP and one is acquainted with the fact thatP, thethought thatP, and the relation of correspondence holdingbetween the thought thatP and the fact thatP. Onsuch a view no single act of acquaintance yields knowledge orjustified belief, but when everything that is constitutive of athought or a proposition’s being true is immediately beforeconsciousness, there is nothing more that one could want or need tojustify a belief. Acts of acquaintance, including acquaintance withpropositions, do not involve belief, judgment, or concept application,and so do not need justification. However, if the objects ofacquaintance, that with which we are acquainted, can be propositional,then perhaps acquaintance with the rights sorts of items (includingpropositional ones) can make a difference to justification. This viewthus grants that a single act of acquaintance with a fact does notprovide justification, but rejects the dilemma’s assumption thatthere are no acts of acquaintance that can, singly or in anycombination, make a difference to justification. (See Fumerton 1995for a reply of this sort. For a reply that is similar in manyrespects, see BonJour 2000 and 2003.)

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

3.3 Doubts about Correspondence and Acquaintance

The direct acquaintance theorist does presuppose the intelligibilityof a world that has “structure” independent of anystructure imposed by the mind. Without facts that are independent ofthe thoughts and judgments that represent them, one could not makesense of a relation of acquaintance between a person and a fact, arelation that grounds foundational justification. More radicalcontemporary rejections of foundationalism may well involvedissatisfaction with the foundationalist’s implicit commitmentto a strong realistic correspondence conception of truth as involvingsome relation to mind-independent facts. A discussion of problems withthe correspondence conception and alternatives would take us farafield, however. (For more, see the entry on thecorrespondence theory of truth.)

Just as some reject the conception of truth underlying classicalfoundationalist accounts of foundational justification, so othersprofess to be bewildered by some of the fundamental concepts employedin defining foundational justification. The acquaintance theoristtends to have relatively little to say by way of analyzing what directacquaintance is. To be sure, one can try to give someone a feel forwhat one is talking about by a method of contrast--e.g., bycontrasting one’s awareness of pain with the temporarydistraction caused by an engrossing conversation. It is tempting tosuppose that for a short time the pain was still present but theperson with the pain was no longer aware of the fact that the painexists. This awareness, the acquaintance theorist will argue, isobviously something over and above mere belief in the existence of thepain, as one can believe that one is in a mental state (say asubconscious mental state) without being aware of that state. (Somemay 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 basicor primitive concept, one that defies further analysis. Just as oneneeds to end epistemic regresses with foundational justification, thefoundationalist will argue, so one needs to end conceptual regresseswith concepts one grasps without further definition.

3.4 The Threat of Skepticism

Although opponents of classical foundationalism are not always eagerto admit it, we suspect that the primary dissatisfaction withclassical foundationalism lies with the difficulty the view hasavoiding radical skepticism. On infallible belief, infalliblejustification, or direct acquaintance theories of foundationaljustification, there is precious little included in the foundations ofknowledge. Most classical foundationalists reject the idea that onecan have noninferentially justified beliefs about the past, but thepresent disappears into the past in the blink of an eye. How can oneeven hope to get back the vast body of knowledge onepre-philosophically supposes one has, if one’s epistemic base isso impoverished? If the second clause of the Principle of InferentialJustification were accepted, the problem is even more serious. Onemight be able to convince oneself that one can know noninferentiallythe principles of deductive reasoning, but deduction will not take oneusefully beyond the foundations of knowledge and justified belief. AsMill (1906: 126) argued, there is a very real sense in which onedoesn’t advance one’s knowledge significantly employing aform of reasoning that takes one only to conclusions that wereimplicitly contained in the conjunction of one’s premises. Toadvance beyond foundations we will inevitably need to employnon-deductive reasoning and according to PIJ that will ultimatelyrequire us to have noninferential knowledge of propositions describingprobability connections between evidence and conclusions that are notlogically implied by the evidence. It is not absurd on the face of itto suppose that one can have noninferentiala prioriknowledge of probabilistic connections, but it is perhaps anunderstatement to say that the view is not popular (see Russell 1948for an excellent discussion of this issue).

4. Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism

We noted above that at least many philosophers are convinced thatacceptance of classical foundationalism leads inevitably to anunacceptably radical skepticism. Some contemporary epistemologistsseek a more modest foundationalism that will make it much easier torespond to the skeptic’s arguments. Michael Huemer’s(2001) phenomenal conservatism and Jim Pryor’s (2000) dogmatismare both views that are far more “permissive” in allowingan extensive range of beliefs to have foundational justification. Andtheir views are not unrelated to Chisholm’s longstanding efforts(e.g., 1989) to locate foundational justification for believingvarious propositions about one’s past and about one’sphysical environment in the character of one’s experientialstates.

Huemer offers his view as an improvement on a cruder view oncedefended by Chisholm (1980) that is often called “epistemicconservatism” and sometimes, more aptly, “doxasticconservatism.” The doxastic conservative takes the mere factthat you believe some propositionP to provideprimafacie justification for believingP. This view does notimply that the mere fact that you believe something renders the beliefjustified, for it may be that your belief isprima faciejustified but notultima facie justified: if you havegood reasons to disbelieveP, or good reasons to think thatyour belief thatP is unreliable or untrustworthy, then yourbelief is “defeated” and not justified. In other words,according to doxastic conservatism, if S believes thatPthen,in the absence of defeaters, S has justification forbelieving thatP.

Many worry that the view is vulnerable to counterexamples, for itseems committed to regarding beliefs that clearly have nothing goingfor them as justified. One of the better counterexamples involvescases in which one forms a belief in a proposition one has no evidencefor or against. Suppose that despite lacking any evidence for oragainst the belief,S somehow comes to believe that there isan even number of grains of sand on a particular beach (Foley 1983:174–5), or that a particular coin that is tossed and lands outof sight has landed “tails” up (Christensen 1994: 74).Suppose also thatS lacks any defeaters for the belief:S has no evidence against the proposition, and is not awareof having formed the belief without evidence or in an unreliable way.Doxastic conservatism yields the counterintuitive result that thisbelief is rational or justified. (For an attempt to respond to thisand related objections on behalf of doxastic conservatism, see McCain2008.)

In any event, most foundationalists sympathetic to internalism prefera view according to which a non-belief state provides justificationfor foundational belief. According tophenomenalconservatism, the justifying state is a “seeming” or“appearance”: if itseems toS thatP, then, in the absence of defeaters,S thereby hassome degree of justification for believing thatP (Huemer2001, 2007, 2013; Cullison 2010; Tucker 2010; Skene 2013). Theseappearances come in various sorts: sensory or perceptual, intellectualor intuitive, mnemonic, and introspective. Many use the term“dogmatism” to refer to the same view, or to the viewrestricted to some domain, typically toperception: if itperceptuallyseems toS thatP,then, in the absence of defeaters,S thereby has somejustification for believing thatP.

It is worth noting that Pryor himself uses the term“dogmatism” to refer to the view that “justificationis sometimes both immediate and underminable” (2013a: 96), andso uses the term in a way that is compatible with the rejection ofphenomenal conservatism and dogmatism as these terms are generallyunderstood. While those who accept the principle (whether in itsgeneral form or as restricted to perceptual seemings) do thereby holdthat some states provide immediate but underminable or defeasiblejustification, it is possible to accept that some other states provideimmediate but underminable justification and deny that perceptualseemings do. However, for simplicity and to follow the more commonusage, we use the two labels “phenomenal conservatism” and“dogmatism” more or less interchangeably in whatfollows.

The main motivation for phenomenal conservatism is straightforward. Asalready noted, the view is far more “permissive” thanclassical foundationalism in allowing for more extensive foundationaljustification. 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 amthinking about getting a glass of water, that pleasure is good, andthat 2 + 3 = 5.Prima facie, it is plausible to say that Ibelieve these propositions because they seem or appear to betrue—because it seems to me that there is a cat on my lap, thatI had fish last night, and so on. If I do indeed believe these thingson the basis of these seemings or appearances, and they constitute anadequate source of justification, then, in the absence of defeaters, Ihave justification for these beliefs. And if we deny that they aregood sources of justification, then how do we avoid skepticism? AsHuemer puts it, “if undefeated appearances are not a source ofjustified belief, then how is one to avoid skepticism about theexternal world, the past, values, abstract objects, and so on? Unlessthis challenge can be met, we would be wise to place our trust in theappearances….” (2013, p. 349).

What exactly are these “seemings” or“appearances”? The distinction between seemings andbeliefs is typically introduced with examples. Once we are familiarwith the Müller-Lyer illusion, we no longer believe that thelines are of unequal length even though, in some sense, they stillappear to be unequal. The same holds for various apparent intuitionsand apparent memories that we become convinced are false. Moreover,beliefs are subject to epistemic norms and can be supported byepistemic reasons, while it doesn’t seem to make sense to saythe same of appearances (McCain and Moretti 2021, p. 56–7).Huemer and others will claim that seemings cannot be identified withdispositions to believe, inclinations to believe, or impulses tobelieve, though not everyone will agree about this. Huemer argues forthis on three main grounds (2007: 30–1). First, it is possibleto have a persisting seeming or appearance (e.g., that one line islonger than another, or that a stick submerged in water is bent) butbe so convinced that it is a mere illusion that you have nodisposition or inclination to believe it. Second, it is possible to beinclined to believe thatP (because, e.g., you really want itto be true) in the absence of a corresponding seeming thatP.Third, appearances can provide non-trivial explanations for what webelieve or what we are disposed to believe: I am inclined to believethat there is a bus approaching because it perceptually seems thatthere is; understanding the latter seeming as an inclination tobelieve trivializes the explanation. Some have pointed out, however,that many problems raised with doxastic accounts of appearances can beavoided by understanding appearances as beliefs or inclinations tobelieve with different contents. According to Glüer (2018)perceptual appearances might be understood as beliefs to the effectthat somethinglookssome way. And according to Conee (2013)and Tooley (2013), seemings can be understood as felt inclinations tobelieve that some state is evidence forP.

Proponents of phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism generally holdthat seemings are a kind of experience distinct from beliefs andinclinations to believe. But they also hold that seemings arenevertheless belief-like in that they are propositional attitudes orat least have propositional or representational contents. And theyhold that seemings have a distinctive phenomenal character: seemingsare “assertive” (Huemer 2013); they have a“phenomenal force” to them such that “it‘feels as if’ we can just tell that those propositions aretrue…just by virtue of having them so represented” (Pryor2000, p. 547, n. 23); “a seeming thatP‘recommends’P as true or ‘assures’the subject of P’s truth” (Tucker 2013). There is aninteresting disagreement among those who are take seemings to be akind of experience, a disagreement that exists even among those whoare sympathetic to phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism in some form.The disagreement concerns the relationship between seemings andsensations or sensory experiences. According to some (e.g., Huemer2001, Ch. 4 and Tolhurst 1998) sensations are themselves a kind orspecies of seeming—perceptual seemings—while others (e.g.,Tucker 2010, Brogaard 2013) take sensations to be distinct fromperceptual seemings, though often accompanied by them. (For more onthe relationship between sensations and seemings, see Tucker 2013, pp.7–8.) Some have argued that any appearance-based theory ofjustification should accept that other features accompanyingappearances can affect whether and how strongly they might justifybeliefs (Reiland 2015, Brogaard and Gatzia 2018, McCain and Moretti2021).

Some have pointed out that attempting to capture the phenomenalcharacter of seemings by saying they are “assertive” ispotentially misleading given that judgments and beliefs are assertiveand seemings are supposed to be non-doxastic experiential states(Smithies 2019, p. 93, McAllister 2018, p. 3082), and somethingsimilar 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 andTooley 2013), while many others take something like phenomenal forceto be an important and familiar, if difficult to describe, feature ofmental 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 thatprovide justification do so without one’s having to be aware ofthe fact that one is in such states. They might both allow, however,that one can turn one’s attention inward to discover the factthat one is in such states, and that one can, in principle, discover(perhapsa priori) that the states in question do give onethe relevant epistemic justification.

5. Objections to Internalist Alternatives to Classical Foundationalism

In this section, we focus on objections commonly raised againstphenomenal conservatism and dogmatism, though they arguably apply toother internalist foundationalist views as well.

As one might expect, the main worry with both Huemer’sphenomenal conservatism and Pryor’s dogmatism is the very air ofdogmatism that Pryor embraces in his label for the view. It strikesmany epistemologists that these views make getting justification forone’s beliefs too easy. Perhaps sensations are representationalstates, and perhaps there is the kind of representational state thatHuemer and other phenomenal conservatives call an appearance or aseeming, but as why should we assume that they accurately representthe world around us? Fear is a representational or propositionalstate, but from the fact that I fear that there are ghosts, it hardlyseems to follow that I have aprima facie justification forbelieving that there are ghosts. For that matter, belief is arepresentational state and if we doubt that mere belief can providejustification, why should we think another representational state,like a seeming, provides justification? Huemer and Pryor will answerthat the representational states they offer as justifiers, perhapsbecause of their peculiar “phenomenal force” or“assertiveness”, are simply different in this respect.While providing no guarantee that the world is as represented, theysimply carry with them justification that other representationalstates are incapable of providing.

The claim that phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism make gettingjustification too easy can be motivated by the “problem of easyknowledge”. Since this problem has been raised against bothinternalist and externalist alternatives to classical foundationalism,we present this problem insection 8, after discussing externalism.

5.1 The Cognitive Penetration Objection

A recent objection to phenomenal conservatism and dogmatism involvesappeal to cases of “cognitive penetration”, cases in whichpropositional attitudes (beliefs, fears, desires, etc.) that thesubject already has give rise to a related seeming. The objectioncomes in two forms. The first is the “illegitimate boost”objection. If I have prior justification to believe thatP(e.g., that my car is in my garage), and that belief causes me to havea seeming thatP (e.g., the belief and expectation make itvisually seem to me that my car is in my garage when I glance quicklyin the direction of my garage), dogmatism entails that thebelief’s justification goes up. The usual reply here is that therelevant claim is not counterintuitive. I gain no additionaljustification via the seeming if I have a good reason to suspect thatmy having the seeming depends on my having the belief; but in the casewhere I have no such reason, it is not clearly counterintuitive to saythat I am justified. Tucker (2013: 14) gives a useful analogy totestimony: if Bill and Jill both testify to me, at different times,that there is free pizza on the quad, then both testimonies give memore reason to believe than either of them separately, and this stillholds ifunbeknownst to me Jill tells me only because sheheard it from Bill.

The second form of the “cognitive penetration” objectionis sometimes called the “tainted source” objection (Huemer2013), and it arises from the fact that propositional attitudes otherthan 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 Jackthat fear partly causes it to seem to her that Jack is angry with her(Siegel 2013). Many find it counterintuitive that Jill could acquirejustification for her belief in this way. The natural suggestion isthat 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 thesubject’s justification is affected by the belief’s causalhistory when that causal history is not accessible to the subject(e.g., Huemer 2013). But at least some phenomenal conservatives admitto 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 elsethat is epistemically bad in the situation—e.g., while thebelief is epistemically justified, the agent is epistemicallyirresponsible, criticizable, or cognitively defective in some way(e.g., Skene 2013), or lacks the sort of justification that can turntrue belief into knowledge (e.g., Tucker 2010). Some worry, however,that not all the problematic “tainted source” cases can behandled in these ways (see Markie 2013 and McGrath 2013.)

6. Externalist Versions of Foundationalism

The epistemic landscape has changed dramatically in the last forty orfifty years with the rise of externalist epistemologies. It isnotoriously difficult to define clearly the controversy betweeninternalists and externalists in epistemology. (For a detaileddiscussion of alternative ways of defining the controversy, seeFumerton 1995: chs. 3 and 4. See also the entry oninternalist 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 canidentify epistemic properties with “internal” states ofbelievers. According to the view we might call “internal stateinternalism” (sometimes called “mentalism”),justification is analyzed in terms of or depends essentially and onlyon what is inside the mind. It follows on this view that no twoindividuals can be internally or mentally alike in all respects andyet differ in the justification they have for the same beliefs. In onesense, then, to be an externalist (a non-mentalist) is to claim thatone’s justification involves or depends essentially on somefacts or states of affairs outside the mind. Others take thecontroversy to center over the question of whether one requirescertain sorts of access for justification. The “accessinternalist” holds (roughly) that being justified in believingthatP requires that there be something within or at leastavailable to one’s perspective or awareness which is relevant tothe truth or justification ofP. (While some accessinternalists seem to have held that everything that determinesjustification must be accessible, as we are about to see, hardly anyinternalists hold such a strong position.) The “accessexternalist” denies that justification requires any such access.The access externalist need not deny that something relevant to thetruth ofP is, at least sometimes, accessible to the subjectwho has justification forP; but paradigm externalists denythat access is alwaysrequired for justification.

Some accept both forms of “internalism”, though perhapstake one sense to be more fundamental than the other. For example, onemight take access internalism to be more fundamental, and hold thatone can have access only to mental states and internal facts aboutthem, and so accept mentalism as a consequence. Or one might take thementalist thesis to be more fundamental, and argue that one has someminimal access to the relevant mental facts, and so accept some formof access internalism as well. But it is possible to accept one formof internalism and reject the other. Some mentalists might deny thatwe have access to all the mental states or features that make adifference to justification. And some access internalists might holdthat we can be directly aware of external objects, external states ofaffairs, or external abstract entities or relations, and take thisdirect 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 injustification without a mental difference, assuming thataccess even to a non-mental entity counts as a mentalrelation 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 forjustification. There are thus stronger and weaker forms of accessinternalism, and as a result the epistemic landscape is quite complex.Certainly, paradigm externalists would reject the second clause of thePIJ. According to virtually all externalists, one can arrive at ajustified belief inP by inferring it fromE withoutbeing aware of any sort of evidential connection betweenEandP; the fact that there is a good evidential connectionbetweenE andP can be external to thesubject’s mind and inaccessible to the subject. They would alsoreject a parallel principle fornoninferential justification:one can arrive at a justified belief on the basis of some sensory orother belief-independent input without being aware of any sort ofevidential connection between the input and the belief. Phenomenalconservatives and dogmatists tend to agree with the paradigmexternalist in rejecting the requirement that one grasp a connectionbetween one’s epistemic grounds or evidence and the propositionbelieved (though they deny that external conditions like reliabilitydiscussed below are also needed for justification). However,externalists typically allow that in principle one could have afoundational belief in the absence of any appearance or seeming. Someepistemologists have combined some modest internal requirements withexternalist ones in their accounts of epistemic justification (see,for example, Alston 1989 and Steup 2004).

While the externalist defends radically different views than those ofclassical foundationalists, the structure of knowledge andjustification that emerges from such theories is still often afoundationalist structure. We might first illustrate the point byexamining 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 producedbeliefs are beliefs that are the product of a reliable process, and areliable process is one that yields beliefs that are usually true (orwould usually be true if enough of them were generated).^[7] Justified beliefs are worth having because justified beliefs areprobably true.

Goldman initially distinguished two importantly different sorts ofjustified beliefs—those that result from belief-independentprocesses and those that result from belief-dependent processes. Theformer are processes that take as their “input” stimuliother than beliefs; the latter are beliefs produced by processes thattake as their input at least some other beliefs. So, for example, itis possible that we have evolved in such a way that when prompted withcertain sensory input we immediately and unreflectively reachconclusions about external objects. And we may live in a world inwhich beliefs about the external world produced in this way areusually true (or would usually be true if enough of them weregenerated). Such beliefs will be justified by virtue of being theproduct of reliable belief-independent processes. This is basicallythe “base clause” of the reliabilist’s analysis, aprinciple of foundational or noninferential justification: if a beliefis the product of a reliable belief-independent process, then it isjustified. Reliabilists generally add to this a condition requiring,in effect, that there be no defeaters available to thesubject—e.g., no good reason or justification to think that thebelief is false, unreliable or untrustworthy. (Specifying the needed“no defeater” condition in the base clause without usingepistemic terms like ‘justification’ and‘reason’ is a nontrivial matter. Goldman (1979) proposesadding the condition that there be no reliable belief-withholdingprocess available to the subject.) These foundational beliefs can inturn be taken as input for reliable belief-dependent processes inorder to generate still more justified beliefs. A belief-dependentprocess is “conditionally” reliable if its output beliefsare usually (or would usually) be true if the relevant input beliefsare true. The output beliefs of conditionally reliablebelief-dependent processes are justified, provided that the inputbeliefs are justified. This is basically the “recursiveclause” of the reliabilist’s analysis, a principle ofnonfoundational or inferential justification: if a belief is theoutput of a conditionally reliable belief-dependent process, and theinput beliefs are justified, then (absent defeaters) the output beliefis justified.

The above is a crude sketch of Goldman’s earlyreliabilism—he later modified it to deal with a number ofobjections. But the sketch is enough to bring out the foundationaliststructure inherent in a reliabilist account. The reliabilist actuallyaccepts the first clause of PIJ, and avoids the epistemic regress byembracing a kind of justified belief that does not owe itsjustification to the having of other justified beliefs. Any undefeatedbelief resulting from a reliable belief-independent process isjustified. No other beliefs are involved in the justification. So,such beliefs are foundational.

Reliabilism might complicate our taxonomy. Some reliabilists mighthold that some belief-dependent processes (taking other beliefs asinput) can provide justification without being inferential processes.After all, there’s nothing about the reliability of a processthat 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 (absentdefeaters). We will see in discussing objections insection 7.1, however, that this might lead to counterintuitive consequences.

It should be noted that Goldman (1979) himself denies that one couldgive a strict definition of an evaluative or normative epistemic termlike ‘justification’ without using other, similarevaluative or normative terms. Still, he is interested in providing“substantive conditions”, conditions that specify,innon-epistemic terms, when a belief is justified. In that sense,Goldman remains interested in providing a general and substantivetheory of justification.

We have illustrated the way in which an externalist account ofjustified belief can exemplify a foundationalist structure byexamining one of the most prominent versions of externalism,reliabilism. But other versions of externalism are also implicitly orexplicitly committed to a version of foundationalism, or, at the veryleast, give an account of justification that would enable one todistinguish noninferential from inferential justification, direct fromindirect knowledge. Consider, for example, a crude version of theso-called causal theory of knowledge according to which one knows aproposition when one believes it and the belief is caused (in the“right” way) by the very fact that makes true what isbelieved. On such an account one can distinguish causal chains leadingto the belief in question that involve intermediate beliefs from thosethat do not. Using this distinction, one can again define adistinction between foundational and nonfoundational knowledge:roughly, the causes of belief that do not include other beliefs arethe ones that would be foundational knowledge.^[8]

Externalist versions of foundationalism are probably attractive tomany because they seem to allow at least the possibility of a muchexpanded foundational base of justified beliefs. Unlike the Cartesianview, the reliabilist’s distinction between foundational andnon-foundational belief has nothing to do with whether the beliefsare somehow infallible or infallibly justified. If nature has beenco-operative enough to ensure the evolution of cognitive agents whorespond to their environmental stimuli with mostly true beliefs, thenthere might be an enormous store of foundational knowledge upon whichwe can draw in arriving at inferentially justified conclusions. Onmost externalist accounts of foundational belief there are literallynoa priori constraints on what might end up beingfoundationally justified. Any proposition might have been believed asthe result of the operation of some conceivable sort of reliablebelief-forming process. Moreover, many epistemologists hold thatjustifiers must in some way be truth-conducive or probable, and therequirement of reliability (or some other such external condition)makes the connection to the truth explicit. In contrast, non-classicalinternalist foundationalist views like phenomenal conservatismthreaten to sever the connection between justification and truth orprobability, for it is possible that propositions that seem true aremostly false.

7. Objections to Externalist Versions of Foundationalism

A full evaluation of externalist versions of foundationalism is farbeyond the scope of this entry (see the entry oninternalist and externalist conceptions of epistemic justification). Here we must inevitably be selective, and focus on reliabilism forillustration (see entry onreliabilist epistemology).

7.1 Challenges to Sufficiency: Norman and Truetemp

The very ease with which the externalist can potentially broaden thefoundational base of knowledge or justified belief is, ironically, oneof the primary concerns of those philosophers unhappy with externalistepistemology. One of the best-known objections to externalism attemptsto show that the externalist’s conditions for foundationalbelief are not sufficient for justification. Recall that for thereliabilist a belief is justified if it is the product of a reliablebelief-independent process and there are no defeaters for the beliefavailable to the subject. Consider BonJour’s (1985: ch. 3) caseof Norman: We can imagine that Norman is a highly reliableclairvoyant, that his clairvoyance produces a belief that thePresident is in New York. Suppose also that he does not realize thathe is a clairvoyant, and that he has no reasons or evidence for oragainst the belief or the reliability of whatever process produced it.Intuitively, Norman’s belief is unjustified. Or considerLehrer’s (1990) case of Truetemp, who, without knowing it, has achip implanted in his head that produces very precise and highlyaccurate beliefs about the ambient temperature. Truetemp often getstemperature beliefs from the operation of the chip, but he has neverchecked their correctness. Intuitively, Truetemp’s belief thatthe temperature is now exactly 47 degrees is not justified.Reliabilism seems to yield the wrong result, justifying too manybeliefs.

There have been a number of attempts to respond to such cases. Oneresponse is defended by Bergmann (2006: ch. 1 and 2) and was alreadydiscussed above in connection with regress problems for accessinternalism (section 3.1). Proponents of the objection often claim that what the cases suggestis that there must be something the subject is aware of or has accessto that makes a difference to his perspective on the truth orappropriateness of the belief. Bergmann argues that this requirement,as tempting or intuitive as it may be, leads to serious regressproblems. (For some replies on behalf of internalism, see Rogers andMatheson 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 tothink that subjects like Norman do have defeaters available, and thisexplains our intuition to regard them as unjustified. However, many,including some other reliabilists, think it is easy to further specifyor 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 thesubject must have an experience or accessible mental state that is infact a reliable way to arrive at beliefs, though the subject need nothave access to the reliability of the experience (Alston 1989).However, there seem to be many possible cases, including versions ofthe cases of Norman and Truetemp, where these conditions are satisfiedbut the intuition is the same; we might suppose for example that somephenomenological sensation, like some unusual sort of itch, headache,or olfactory sensation, is in fact a highly reliable indicator of thetruth of their beliefs regarding the whereabouts of the President orthe ambient temperature. This intuitively makes no difference whenthey are unaware that it is reliable (see Lyons 2009: 125).

A more recent attempt to respond to the Norman and Truetemp cases addsa restriction for basic or foundational beliefs: they must beperceptual beliefs, beliefs produced by a “perceptualsystem” (see Lyons 2009: ch. 4, for more on what counts as aperceptual system). Lyons (2009: ch. 5) argues that the originalNorman case doesn’t specify whether the belief is a product of aperceptual system, and in the Truetemp case it is the product of animplanted chip and not a perceptual system; he also argues that oncewe change the details to make the beliefs the result of perceptualsystems the intuitions seem to change. For example, imagine thatNorman* is like Norman except that he belongs to an alien species allmembers of which have clairvoyant abilities, thanks to their evolvedperceptual organs and reliable processes of information transfer.Lyons claims that, intuitively, someone like Norman*’s beliefthat the President is in New York is justified, even if Norman* is notaware of the existence or reliability of such processes.

Just as the cases of Norman and Truetemp are designed to show thatreliabilism makes getting foundational justification too easy, other,similar cases seem to show that reliabilism make gettingnonfoundational justification too easy. Suppose, for example,that while you are asleep a group of logician-neuroscientists implanta device in your head that takes some of your highly reliablefoundational beliefs (say, introspective or perceptual beliefs) asinput and responds by selecting at random from a list of complextheorems of logic and producing a belief in that theorem. Intuitively,such beliefs are not justified despite their high degree ofreliability. (This example is taken from Lyons 2009: 126). Oneintuitive diagnosis is that the relation between the output beliefsand input beliefs is not evidential or inferential, or the process bywhich the output beliefs are generated is not an evidential orinferential one. The challenge for the reliabilist who wants to avoidsaying that such beliefs are justified, and avoid adding internalistconstraints, is to provide a better account of inferential processes.To retain its externalism, the account must not have good inferencedepend on awareness of or access to the connection betweenpropositions believed.

7.2 A Challenge to Necessity: The New Evil Demon Problem

The objections discussed above challenge the sufficiency of theexternalist’s proposed conditions for justification. However,even if the above counterexamples to sufficiency are met, we mightquestion whether the externalist’s conditions capture somethingessential to or necessary for foundational justification, or for thejustification of other beliefs on the basis of foundational ones. Isunconditional, belief-independent reliability, for example, reallynecessary for justification at the foundational level? And isconditional, belief-dependent reliability really necessary for thejustification of other beliefs?

The “new evil demon problem” (Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen1984) challenges the claim that externalist conditions likereliability really are necessary. Suppose that there is a subject thatis just like you in all internal respects, except that while yourbeliefs are (let’s assume) reliably produced, your twin’sor counterpart’s are not, for his or her beliefs are produced bya powerful deceiving demon. Intuitively, your twin is no lessjustified than you are. But given that your twin’s beliefs arenot reliable, the reliabilist must say that your twin’s beliefsare not justified.

Various responses have been proposed. Some see no significant problemwith denying that the evil demon victim is justified. If this is not ablanket rejection of the appeal to intuitions, it would help toaccount for the intuitions in some way, and some responses that appealto an ambiguity in “justification” could be understood asdoing just that. For example, Goldman (1988) says that thecounterpart’s belief is “weakly justified” in thesense that the belief, though formed by an unreliable process, is onethe subject is epistemically responsible or blameless for having, butthe belief is not “strongly justified” in the sense thatinvolves reliability. This does not seem to be adequate, forintuitively, there is something positive about the deceivedcounterpart’s situation that is not captured by saying that heis epistemically responsible or blameless. A subject who reasons inaccordance with principles that are horribly defective in ways hecannot detect may have tried his best and be as epistemicallyblameless as an evil demon victim who attends carefully to hisexperiences and follows good principles of reasoning, butthere’s something clearly positive about the latter’sepistemic situation that goes beyond epistemic blamelessness (see Audi1993: 28, and Pryor 2001: 117 for discussion of this point). Someexternalists like Bach (1985) and Engel (1992) posit a similar sort ofambiguity between doxastic and personal justification, i.e., between abelief’s being justified and aperson’sbeing justified in holding the belief, so that the demon victim isjustified in believing as he does, but his beliefs are not justified.Kvanvig and Menzel (1990) object that a person’s being justifiedin believing something entails that their belief is justified, so thatthe distinction cannot help with the problem, but Littlejohn (2009)argues that there is no such entailment, that the distinction betweenpersonal 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 positingan ambiguity, a number of reliabilists attempt to accommodate theintuition by amending the conditions for justification. An earlierresponse by Goldman (1986) attempts to defend “normal worldsreliabilism” according to which a subject’s belief isjustified if the process producing the belief is reliable in normalworlds, where a “normal world” is, roughly, a world whereour general beliefs about the actual world are true. It is no surprisethat Goldman himself was quick to give this up. One obvious worry withthis 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 beliefsabout the world are unjustified (Pollock and Cruz 1999: 115). Morerecently, some have suggested more sophisticated amendments to theconditions or to the sort of reliability required so as to accommodatethe intuition while avoiding the problems of normal worlds reliabilism(see Comesaña 2002; Majors and Sawyer 2005; Henderson andHorgan 2006).

8. The Problem of Easy Knowledge

We end by presenting the “problem of easy knowledge” thathas been raised against both internalist and externalist alternativesto classical foundationalism (see Cohen 2002 for an initialformulation of the problem). The problem as presented there has twomain forms. The first involves cases of deductive closure. Suppose, touse an example from Cohen (2002), that I am looking to acquire a redtable for my room and do not want to end up with a table that onlylooks red—e.g., a white table illuminated by red lights. Supposethat upon looking at a particular table I find that it seems red tome. If phenomenal conservatism is true, then I can arrive atknowledge, or at least justified belief, by the following simpleinference:

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 byred lights.
3. So, this table is not a white table illuminated by redlights.

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 beingfed illusory experiences of hands.
3. So, I am not a handless brain in a vat being fed illusoryexperiences of hands.

The problem is that it seems implausible that I could come to bejustified in believing—let alone know—that the table isnot a white table illuminated by red lightsmerely on thebasis of its looking or seeming to be red. Of course, I may and oftendo have independent reasons to trust that the colors of tables arenormally the way they look (colored lights are rare, I don’tnotice any such lights, etc.), and the above argument makes no mentionof that. But given phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, a perceptualseeming alone would confer justification for beliefs of the form (1)in the absence of defeaters, whether or not one had good independentreasons to take the seeming to be trustworthy. Similarly, givenreliabilism, a reliable perceptual process alone would conferjustification for beliefs of form (1) in the absence of defeaters. Thesame applies to the second inference: it is implausible that I couldcome to be justified in believing that I am not a handlessbrain-in-a-vat that merely seems to have hands on the basis of aperception or perceptual seeming that I have hands.

It is difficult to see how these views can deny that (3) could bejustified in this way. Let’s make this explicit: suppose that ineach case (1) is indeed noninferentially justified for me on the basisof the corresponding seeming or reliable perceptual process, that Iknow the obvious entailment (2) a priori, and that on the basis ofthis I infer (3). Suppose also that we accept the followingintuitively plausible principle of closure: ifS is justifiedin believing thatP, knows thatP entails thatQ, and infers on the basis of this thatQ, thenS is justified in believing thatQ. (This is aprinciple that phenomenal conservatives and dogmatists themselves tendto accept. A few externalists, such as Dretske (1970) and Nozick(1981) deny the closure principle at work in the objection, but manyexternalists are reluctant to deny that something like it holds, forthey 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). Theobjector who uses this against phenomenal conservatism or reliabilismtakes the lesson here to be that mere seemings or reliable processes(respectively) cannot be a source of foundational or noninferentialjustification. Justification can’t be that easy.

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

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

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

One possible reply is to grant that such arguments arequestion-begging and epistemically useless if presented to someone whodoubts the reliability or trustworthiness of such seemings or apparentperceptions, but hold that it can still provide a subject who lacksthat doubt with justification. While the argument is question-beggingagainst the skeptic, that is no reason to deny that one could, in theabsence of defeaters, acquire knowledge or justification on the basisof such arguments (Pryor 2004; Markie 2005; Bergmann 2008). However,some object that such arguments remain intuitivelyproblematic—the arguments seem not to justify at all, whether ornot they should persuade skeptics. (Cohen 2005; see also Vogel 2008a:539–42, for further examples of cases for which dogmatism allowssubjects to have justification that they really lack).

One might begin to wonder whether the problem of easy knowledge is aproblem forall foundationalist views if it is a problem forany. Indeed, some have argued that classical foundationalists are inno better a position than phenomenal conservatives and externalistswith respect to the problem, for they too will have to allow that onecould rely on acquaintance with facts to justify the existence andtrustworthiness of acquaintance. First, consider a parallel case ofdeductive closure:

Classical foundationalists might respond that the problem is not oneof permitting some source to justify propositions about itself or itsepistemic credentials. The problem is that some alleged sources makethe justification implausibly easy. Classical foundationalism doesnot; the intuition that the knowledge or justification acquired isimplausibly easy or unsatisfying in the argument forms just presentedis absent or at least much weaker (see Fumerton 2006). The problemthat classical foundationalism faces is that it makes justificationtoo hard, not too easy.

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