Day 17: BonJour on Foundationalism

• Return Test 1; Discuss

• A Priori vs. A Posteriori (Empirical)

• Two concerns for traditional foundationalism

• The Sellarsian Dilemma

• BonJour on Metabeliefs

• BonJour on Beliefs about Sensory Experience

• Justification and the Conceptual Formulation of Sensory Content

• Read IE 133-158

A Priori vs. A Posteriori (Empirical)

• What is a priori knowledge?

• What is a posteriori knowledge?

• Can you be a foundationalist with respect to one and a coherentist with respect to the other?

Two Concerns for Traditional Foundationalism

• BonJour defends a very traditional (“old fashioned”) form of foundationalism, and he identifies two problems to address:

• How do we explain the nature of basic or non-inferentially justified beliefs?

• How do we get from basic beliefs to beliefs about the external world?

The Sellarsian Dilemma

• What sort of thing can serve as a justifier?

• If the justifier is non-conceptual, how can it justify?

• If the justifer is conceptual, won’t it stand in need of justification?

• The dilemma applied to beliefs about experience

• The dilemma applied to beliefs about beliefs

BonJour on Metabeliefs

• Occurrent beliefs (as opposed to other types of beliefs)

• BonJour on the nature of occurrent beliefs

• BonJour on how beliefs about beliefs can be foundational

BonJour on Beliefs about Sensory Experience

• The status of sensory experience

• Beliefs about sensory experience as descriptions of sensory experience

• The foundational status of beliefs about sensory experience

Justification and the Conceptual Formulation of Sensory Content

• Do we have the conceptual resources we need to generate the descriptions of sensory experience required to have justified beliefs?

• Do we have the time to construct the required justifications?

• Can the average person be said to be epistemically justified in believing anything?