Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 16:13:11 -0500 From: Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <quilty-AT-philos.umass.edu> Subject: Re: foundationalism Justin Schwartz writes: *}Thus understood, foundationlism is what philosophers call realism, atleast *}on its semantic and metaphysical sides, and anti-foundationalism is what *}philosophers call idealism--the doctrine that the world itself depends on *}or is constituted by our conceptions or language. So understood, I am of *}course a foundationalist. I think this is a misuse of the term because it *}suggests confusion with the epistemological doctrine, which I reject. Hmmm... I guess I'd like to split a couple hairs here. It strikes me as slightly funny to contrast realism with idealism, as Schwartz does. The terms which ring truer to me would be a contrast between *materialism* and idealism. That is, these are different *ontological* views about the "stuff" of the world -- the world might be made out of matter, or it might be made out of spirit. Other possibilities than these two could be held, under this understanding: dualism, third-stuff-ism. Spinoza, for example, thought there were infinitely many substances of the world, mind and matter being just a couple which humans live with. Realism, in contrast, seems like a thoroughly *epistemic* matter. I understand this to be the notion that what makes *beliefs* true is their being sufficiently *like* the way the world is in-itself. Under this meaning, a realist could perfectly well be either a materialist or an idealist. Maybe Fichte is a idealist realist, although it sounds funny to say. I think an anti-realist can be either idealist or materialist as well. I like to think that I am a materialist anti-realist inasmuch as I don't think beliefs are really much like "the world", but nonetheless accept as a matter of faith (and class-committment) that beliefs are made of matter (I'm a *reductionist* materialist even, that anathema of dialecticians :-)). Foundationalism, as Schwartz points out, is also a strictly epistemic matter. But it's not so much a question of what makes beliefs good as it is how they relate to one another. I suppose foundationalism is a topological claim that descending chains have greatest lower bounds ("roots end", I guess). It's not merit, but structure which is at issue IMO with (anti-)foundationalism, making its concern perhaps a branch of psychology, along the lines of what sometimes nowadays gets called 'cognitive epistemology' or the like. Yours, Lulu... quilty-AT- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/ THIS MESSAGE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:_/_/_/_/_/ v i philos. _/_/ Postmodern Enterprises _/_/ s r umass. _/_/ MAKERS OF CHAOS.... _/_/ i u edu _/_/_/_/_/ LOOK FOR IT IN A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU_/_/_/_/_/_/ g s ------------------
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