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Full Idea
The central argument for foundationalism is simply that all other possible outcomes of the regress of justifications lead inexorably to scepticism.
Clarification
The 'regress' is every belief being endlessly justified by another belief
Gist of Idea
The main argument for foundationalism is that all other theories involve a regress leading to scepticism
Source
Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §I)
Book Ref
'Epistemology: Internalism and Externalism', ed/tr. Kornblith,Hilary [Blackwell 2001], p.11
A Reaction
If you prefer coherence to foundations, you need the security of reason to assess the coherence (which seems to be an internal foundation!).
4255 | Externalist theories of knowledge are one species of foundationalism [Bonjour] |
4261 | The Lottery Paradox says each ticket is likely to lose, so there probably won't be a winner [Bonjour, by PG] |
4257 | The big problem for foundationalism is to explain how basic beliefs are possible [Bonjour] |
4256 | The main argument for foundationalism is that all other theories involve a regress leading to scepticism [Bonjour] |
4258 | Extreme externalism says no more justification is required than the truth of the belief [Bonjour] |
4259 | External reliability is not enough, if the internal state of the believer is known to be irrational [Bonjour] |
4260 | Even if there is no obvious irrationality, it may be irrational to base knowledge entirely on external criteria [Bonjour] |