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Foundationalism and the Disengaged Knower

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Abstract

I outline foundationalism and its reliance on an immediately given epistemic content. I develop the foundationalist account as related to a particular picture of the human condition, the moral/cultural motivations for adopting such an account, and I highlight the connection of foundationalism to atomistic conceptions of the individual. I give arguments for, and classic examples of, both rationalist and empiricist forms of immediacy. I end the chapter by highlighting what I take to be incoherent in the notion of an immediately given epistemic content and outline the transcendental form of argument I will use to draw out this incoherency. In giving these transcendental arguments over the following two chapters, I will be putting pressure on the atomist conception of the individual which is so connected with the foundationalist enterprise.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rorty (1991), 21.

  2. 2.

    For more on this see Rorty (2009).

  3. 3.

    Rorty (1991), 22.

  4. 4.

    I think that to call knowledge nothing other than widespread agreement is far too simple. Knowledge and reason are grounded on a widely shared activity, but that activity makes available standards of reason and presents tensions and conflicts which can be used as a basis for argument about better and worse ways to conceive of things.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., 31.

  6. 6.

    Kant (1991).

  7. 7.

    Rorty (1991), 31.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 31.

  9. 9.

    The objectivist hope of forming the true human community is often born out in the history of philosophy via the many attempts to ground our ethics first of all in a naturalist epistemology. To get a good sense of Bentham’s ‘objectivist’ task, see Bentham (1994), and for his view on empty phrases see Mill (1950), 51–53, where he is quoting from Bentham (2009). This particular line of thought can be traced back to Hume’s empiricist epistemology and the account of ethics which he drew from this. See Hume (1983).

  10. 10.

    Rorty (1991), 22.

  11. 11.

    Taylor (1997a), 3.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 4.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 5.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 7.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 7.

  16. 16.

    Descartes (1996), 12.

  17. 17.

    Williams (2005), 51.

  18. 18.

    Brandom (1997), 125.

  19. 19.

    Descartes (1996), 16.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 17.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 17.

  22. 22.

    Descartes (1931), 38.

  23. 23.

    For a longer discussion on this see Kenny (1968), 40–62.

  24. 24.

    Brandom (1997), 121.

  25. 25.

    Williams (2005), 44.

  26. 26.

    Descartes (1996), 21.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 24.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 24.

  29. 29.

    ‘Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something; or make it true at some future time that I have never existed, since it is now true that I exist; or bring it about that two and three added together are more or less than five, or anything of this kind in which I see a manifest contradiction’ in Ibid., 25.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 28.

  31. 31.

    Sensations are not the only things taken to be given in the history of philosophy. Willem A DeVries and Timm Triplett stress this point in their Knowledge, Mind, and the Given, highlighting Spinoza’s axioms in his Ethics, as well as both Platonic Realists and Bertrand Russell who have claimed that universals must be given. See deVries and Triplett (2000), XXI. Spinoza is a particularly conspicuous example, as he lists a selection of axioms at the start of each section of his Ethics, from which in combination he claims to derive the entirety of his system. See Spinoza (1996).

  32. 32.

    Russell (1998), 4.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 3.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 3.

  35. 35.

    deVries and Triplett (2000), XXVI.

  36. 36.

    Taylor (1997a), 9

  37. 37.

    Locke and Berkeley discussed in the following paragraph are both members of this tradition. See Book II: Of Ideas in Locke (1997) and Berkeley (1999).

  38. 38.

    deVries and Triplett (2000), XXI.

  39. 39.

    Kenny (2008), 132.

  40. 40.

    Berkeley (1999), 27.

  41. 41.

    Russell (1998), 20–21.

  42. 42.

    Sellars (2000), 21.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 23.

  44. 44.

    Taylor (1997a), 12.

  45. 45.

    Taylor (1997b).

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 26.

  47. 47.

    Taylor acknowledges that while transcendental arguments traditionally conceived are concerned with experience, they need not all be so concerned. He gives an example from Strawson’s ‘Individuals’, and also some of Wittgenstein’s work in the Philosophical Investigations. I take my account of Wittgenstein in Chap. 5 to be a transcendental reading. See Taylor (1976). See also Strawson (2003).

  48. 48.

    Taylor (1997a), 29.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 12.

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  1. University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Matthew Whittingham

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Whittingham, M. (2018). Foundationalism and the Disengaged Knower. In: The Self and Social Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77246-2_3

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