Alston, W. (1976). "Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?" , Philosophical Studies, 29(5), pp. 287-294 and 300-305.
This reading (written by W.P Alston) is a response to F.L Will’s critique of foundationalism in his paper Induction and Justification, and so is a defense of foundationalism.
Alston’s defence of foundationalism can be treated implicitly as a repones to Bonjour-on-coherentism.
Will’s critique of foundationalism
Will’s critique targets strong foundationalism in particular.
For Will, foundationalism claims that basic beliefs are such beliefs that “are known in a special, direct, certain and incorrigible way.” This means that basic beliefs have special characteristics, and are not supposed to be susceptible to revision or correction. Another feature of his characterization of strong foundationalism is that all further knowledge claims must be “authenticated” by being derived from cognitions of basic beliefs. Also, Will maintains that basic cognitions are “logically independent” of other claims, and must be “self-justifying”.
Will argues that there are no such basic claims or cognitions. His central idea is that even if the claim is about our own sensory experience, the claim won’t have the kind of independence and certainty that foundationalist maintains.
Alston’s defense of foundationalism
Alston’s response to Will’s critique is that minimal foundationalism (or moderate foundationalism) doesn’t suffer from any of these defects.
Minimal foundationalism doesn’t require basic beliefs to be certain, or incorrigible, or infallible; it only requires that whatever justification basic beliefs may have is independent of other beliefs.
Will finds the idea of logical independence questionable and claims that logical independence implies that for a foundationalist, a cognition “can be established in utter independence from other claims”. Minimal foundationalism grants that basic beliefs are logically independent of other beliefs and so could be susceptible to Will’s critique. However, Alston argues that it’s one thing for a belief to be justified, and another thing to “establish” or “show” that the belief is justified, as Will claims. Alston posits that establishing or showing that a belief is justified may require appeal to other beliefs, but the justification itself does not require other beliefs.
“I don’t see what sense can be attached to showing or establishing p without adducing some grounds q, not identical with p.”
Alston is granting Bonjour-on-coherentism point that you cannot establish that a belief is justified without appealing to further beliefs. However, a belief’s justification doesn’t necessarily depend on our ability to establish that it is justified.
“To say that a belief is immediately justified [that is, basic] is just to say that there are conditions sufficient for its justification that do not involve any other justified beliefs of that believer. This condition could be satisfied even if the believer has other justified beliefs that could serve as grounds.”
Another point Bonjour makes is that the believer must have cognitive possession of a reason why the belief is likely to be true, and so is giving a version of justification that entails that the believer justifies a belief with other beliefs. Alston implicitly denies this point that cognitive possession of justifying premises may be only necessary if the believer is to show or establish a justification for their belief, but the justification itself does not necessarily depend on this.
E.g. = Bonjour’s outline for perceptual beliefs to be justified is designed as a way to describe how even perceptual beliefs require other beliefs for their justification. Alston maintains that arguments like that aren’t necessary for perceptual beliefs to be justified.
Based on Alston’s arguments, it is clear that there is a kind of justification that doesn’t require appealing to other beliefs, and is built into the very idea of justification, which can be called foundational justification.
Foundational justification
Alston rejects Bonjour’s internalist account of epistemic justification, and instead gives an externalist account. Like Goldman-causal-analysis-of-knowledge which develops the Reliabilist theory of justification = it does not require a believer to have access to the justifying reasons of their belief, just that the belief is caused or produced by a reliable process that typically produces true belief.
This externalist approach to justification allows us to understand foundational justification, of how basic beliefs can be justified even if its justification doesn’t appeal to other beliefs. Because if a belief is caused by a reliable process, like perception, then there are good objective grounds for thinking that the belief is true. This also satisfies Bonjour’s requirement that justifying grounds provide a reason for thinking that a belief is true, if we consider the condition in externalist terms rather than in the internalist terms that Bonjour assumes.
Alston on the Regress Argument
Alston believes that the main function of basic beliefs is to stop the infinite regress argument, i.e. they are necessary in order to prevent the situation in which a given belief’s justification would require an infinite regress of further justifying beliefs.
According to Alston, foundationalism is the only view that satisfactorily responds to the regress problem.
coherentism overcomes the regress problem by allowing (to be expressed loosely) the structure of justification to be circular, and so it does not regress infinitely.