Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 07:33:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: Re: foundationalism


	Marshall Feldmann accepts an overdetermined mode of analysis but 
considers it foundational partly because scientists make metaphysical 
assumtions and partly because it is impossible to keep all questions 
open, as an anti-foundational position would require. I can grant that 
scientists make metaphysical assumptions, as Kuhns says, but I do not 
agree that therefore their analyses are foundational. In my view, for an 
analysis to be foundational, it must claim that its metaphysical 
principles govern its results in some deductive sense. In other words, 
the results are possible because of the metaphysical assumption. This is 
different from a Kuhnian analysis in which anomalies expose the 
metaphysical assumptions or worldview which has implicitly governed 
interpretive practive all along. A foundational analysis rules out 
results incompatible with its assumptions -- no anomalies. In other 
words, insofar as an anti-foundational analysis precludes the notion that 
theories govern practice, it does not keep all options open. 

Philip GOldstein

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