Problem of Foundationalism as a Theory of Epistemic Justification

As the title indicates, this paper is intended to provide an account of the foundationalist's theory of justification of infallible basic beliefs.It is surely fair to suggest that for literally thousands of years, the foundationalist's thesis was taken to be almost trivially true.What this paper sets out to do is to identify what actually constitutes the core of the foundationalists' theory, the problem with the foundationalists claim and the attack on foudationalism.According to the foundationalist's claim, for all our beliefs to be justified they must consist of basic beliefs.These basic beliefs must be infallible, incorrigible and self justifying.Foudationalism over time have been quoted to be one of the most popular theories of justification of claims to knowledge.This paper is intended to critically evaluate this claim of the foundationalists and to be able to see how certain beliefs can be basic and self justifying and yet will not fall to subjectivity considering the fact that the basic belief is dependent on sense perception that can fall to subjectivism. Keynote: Foudationalism, Epistemic justification, Infallible, Inferential, Basic beliefs, Incorrigible, Static. What is Foundationalism?Foundationalism is a theory of justification of our claims to knowledge.This position is held by some theorists of epistemic justification that all our beliefs are made up of two kinds:Those beliefs which need support from others and need not to support themselves, that is; basic beliefs that are self justifying and non basic beliefs that need to be justified by their inferential relationship to the basic beliefs.The foundationalists went a step further to make distinctions of these beliefs and that these beliefs are divided into two groups; those that are infallible and self evident and those that are inferential.Foundationalism as a theory of justification posits that some beliefs are incorrigible and infallible and as such does not need to be justified.Such beliefs are said to be self evident or derived by intuition 1 .According to the foundationalists, all justifications of our knowledge is ultimately traceable to the foundations of basic beliefs.Every belief must have a basic foundation upon which we can derive other forms of epistemic beliefs.Any non-basic belief can only be justified if it is related to the non-basic ones.Foundationalism is a very popular theory of justification.It is of the position that all beliefs are of two kinds.According to Dr. K.A. Owolabi, ''Foundationalism is a theory of justification that claims that a belief is justified if it is derived from some basic beliefs called foundations''. 2 Origin of FoundationalismFoundationalism as a theory of justification came about as a result of the attempt of theorists of knowledge's endeavour to reduce the scepticisms attached on the truth and nature of knowledge .3Rene Descartes is taken to be one of the earlier profounder of foudationalism.He wanted to identify foundational knowledge with infallible beliefs because he wanted to build knowledge on appropriate and secure foundations.Descartes in his quest to explain his existence beyond doubt introduced foundational basic beliefs by affirming the need for the discarding of all other knowledge especially those of our senses until one gets to a solid base upon which he can build other forms of epistemic beliefs. Features of Foundationalism The foundationalists claim that all justification is ultimately traceable to the foundation of justification.to the foundationalists, a particular knowledge claims can only be justified on the basis of its relationship with a basic belief. The foundationalists also hold the belief that, for any belief that does not belong to the set of basic belief to be justified they must be connected to those beliefs inferentially. The foundationalists are of the opinion that our beliefs are structural which is; foundational and super structured; between basic and non-basic beliefs.For the foundationalists our beliefs are infallible and self evident.