Today I am going to begin my talk on the structure of justification, which is how all beliefs in our minds are related. This network of beliefs is called "noetic structures". There are two main competing structures of justification, Coherentism, and Foundationalism. By way of analogy, we will explain both of them.

Imagine you have a chain of beliefs, P, Q, and R. P justifies Q, and Q justifies R. But what justifies P? Perhaps O justifies it, and N justifies O, and M justifies N, and so on out to infinity. Obviously this is highly flawed because it leads to a vicious infinite regress, and hence most philosophers have abandoned it.

Perhaps P is just a brute faith assumption. But if that is the case, what justifies Q and R?

Maybe R justifies P, or the 3 beliefs form a web of mutual justification. This structure is called Coherentism

Or perhaps P is just some self-evident belief or sensation from experience. This is called Foundationalism. We shall turn to an explanation and defense of Foundationalism presently.

Within foundationalism, there are two classes of beliefs, Basic beliefs, and nonbasic beliefs. Basic beliefs are immediately justified, and nonbasic beliefs are justified by other nonbasic, which are ultimately justified by Basic beliefs.

Properly basic beliefs are not justified by any beliefs. The term "Evidence" Denotes a belief which justifies another belief.

So what is a "properly basic belief"? Well, simply, properly basic beliefs are both Basic and those which meet some criterion for being proper to call "basic". Basic beliefs are foundational to knowledge.

Now what are the conditions for properly calling a belief "basic"? There is much debate within foundationalist schools of epistemology over what qualifies a belief as "properly basic". This debate is important to understand because, often, when giving arguments for God whose premises are to be taken as properly basic, detractors will say "no, that doesn't meet the criterion for being a properly basic belief" while being completely oblivious to the fact that there is no settled, universally agreed-upon standard by which beliefs are to be held as properly basic.

Now, the first criterion given is from the classical foundationalists. Classical Foundationalists hold that only incorrigible sensory data, like "I feel pain right now" or "I have a red sensation right now" and self-evident truths of reason (logical and mathematical truths) qualify as properly basic beliefs. However other foundationalists hold that truths about theology and ethics can also qualify as properly basic.

There are also two schools within Classical foundationalists, ancient classical foundationalists, and modern classical foundationalists. Ancient classical foundationalists held that sensory beliefs like "There is a tree in front of me" are properly basic beliefs. However, Modern classical foundationalists, like Descartes, hold that incorrigible sense data is properly basic. For instance "I believe that I see a tree in front of me" is properly basic, but the existence of the tree is not properly basic.

An incorrigible belief is a belief which is unable to be wrong. For instance, "I feel pain" is an incorrigible belief. One can show the source of the pain to be an illusion, but that doesn't mean that you do not feel pain. Strong foundationalists say that incorrigibility is a criterion for something properly basic, and if it is not incorrigible, it is not properly basic. By contrast, weak foundationalists hold that beliefs need only be prima facie justified to count as properly basic. In our defense of particularism against Methodism and skepticism, we saw good reasons to adopt the weak foundationalist standpoint. Recall that the reason for this is that people can still have knowledge even if they do not know what knowledge is, or the criterion for having knowldge. It would seem that for the strong foundationalist, one is only justified in believing that a tree is in front of them if they reflect upon their incorrigible sensations. But people can clearly know that there is a tree in front of them without reflecting upon their incorrigible sense data.

Finally, Foundationalists say that basic beliefs are not grounded in evidence while they still have grounds. Some foundationalists are internalists, while others are externalists.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs.

First off, the relationship is irreflexive and asymmetrical. P justifies Q, but Q does not justify P

Second, Basic beliefs do not need to deductively justify nonbasic beliefs

Third, Our noetic structures are strengthened if our basic and nonbasic beliefs cohere with eachother

Now let's talk about the arguments for Foundationalism. First off, the argument from experience and perceptual beliefs. It's a phenomenological fact that experience itself seems to enjoy a privileged epistemic status, and being immediately justified, it seems to be the justification for most other beliefs. This is very close to foundationalism. There are several coherentist responses to this argument.

1: Perception is full of error and is full of theories, which we have a precondition bias towards.

The foundationalist could respond to this by saying that it still seems as though we see things directly. Take for instance seeing a car drive by, but being preoccupied with work, you do not notice it. Then say that you recall it from memory. Your memory could serve as justification for your belief that a car drove by earlier.

2nd response by coherentists: That which grounds a basic belief can only do so if the grouding itself is rooted in some sort of argument, or "meta-level" justification.

But we could response by simply pointing out, once again, that this is not the case. People still form beliefs about the external world without appealing to some sort of meta-level justification

3rd response by coherentists: This priority of experience is merely a fact of psychology, not of epistemology.

Foundationalists would respond by simply pointing out that a structure of justification which takes into account how we actually form beliefs is more plausible than one which does not. So this counts in favor of Foundationalism. On coherentism, this priority is simply ad hoc

The second argument for Foundationalism is the fact of truths of reason. We know truths of logic, like Modus ponens (If P then Q, P, therefore Q) and Mathematics (2+2=4) without justification by other beliefs. These are self-evidence and are immediately justified just by our awareness of them.

So how do coherentists respond? They don't. There really is no response other than limiting coherentism to perceptual beliefs.

The final argument is the regress argument. Recall our epistemic chain outlined earlier, with P, Q, and R. If P justifies Q, and Q justifies R, and R justifies P, then this is a viciously circular noetic structure. Add more beliefs and it doesn't change. Now if we say that there is an interlinking web of beliefs, then it is still circular. If the only justification for beliefs is other beliefs, then beliefs, in a way, justify themselves. This is viciously circular.

There are several arguments against Foundationalism, to which we shall now turn.

First, Coherentists allege that there are no incorrigible beliefs, and that everything is subject to revision, and this includes EVERYTHING, as Willard Van Orben Quine noted. Sometimes, allegedly incorrigible beliefs turn out to be wrong.

There are a few responses to this argument

1: We could abandon strong foundationalism and say that foundational beliefs do not need to be incorrigible.

2: We could reassert the incorrigibility of the foundations. If we limit ourselves to immediate sensations, like seeing a red object, then one can't be wrong about their red sensation. There are a few responses to this argument

1: You can be wrong because you still need to first experience redness in order to believe that you have a red sensation.

But this response seems to appeal to Methodism, which leads to a vicious infinite regress.

2: One must have language and meaning for "sensation" and "red" because we think in language.

But this is flawed on 4 levels

1: People can think rapidly without signs and words in their minds

2: Small children and animals can think, but they do not have language

3: How could we ever enter into a language in the first place if language takes priority to belief?

4: Finally, there is a difference between actually having a belief, and telling others about that belief

There is one counterexample brought up to show the falsity of incorrigibility. Let's imagine that a brain psychologist has built a machine which can read brains and what mental sensations patients are having. Now let's say that the machine says that the patient has a blue sensation, but the patient says that he has a red sensation. The patient would be wrong about this

But this response is flawed in that it begs the question. It assumes that foundational beliefs are not incorrigible, for if the patient's belief was incorrigible, then the doctor would have to stop insisting that the patient has a blue sensation.

The second argument against foundationalism is that foundationalists cannot outline the relationship between beliefs, or how one belief justifies another.

Foundationalists would respond by saying "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black", because on this ground, coherentists don't fare any better. All that follows from this is that more work needs to be done on the transfer of justification.

3, finally, cohernetists allege that foundational beliefs are too slim to justify all other beliefs.

Again, we are not sure about this statement, as Robert Audi, and Roderick Chisholm have developed theories of how foundations justify other beliefs.

Now that we have covered Foundationalism, I want to focus now on Coherentism.

Coherentism has several tenets, including the idea that beliefs are justified by how they fit with other beliefs, or how they "cohere" with other beliefs. This is called the "Doxatic assumption".

The next tenet is that There is no privileged class of beliefs. Rather than being basic and immediately justified, sensory perception is nothing more than theory-laden judgement.

There is some debate over how justification is transferred. Some coherentists say that as long as beliefs don't contradict other beliefs, the set is "coherent". But surely this is incorrect, for one could believe that they were Napoleon and say that everyone else who disagreed was lying, or insane.

There is positive and negative Coherentism. Positive coherentism says that one must show how beliefs cohere with other beliefs. Negative coherentism says that you assume that beliefs cohere with each other until they are shown not to.

Then there is strong and weak coherentism. Strong coherentism says coherence is the sole determinant for whether a belief is justified, and weak coherentism says that coherence is one among many determinants for justification.

Then there is linear and holistic coherentism. Linear coherentism says that there is a circular chain of beliefs, where individual beliefs individually justify other individual beliefs, and those justify other beliefs. Holistic coherentism says that all beliefs form an interlinking web. The relationship between belief X and the entire web of beliefs justifies X

Linear coherentism is plainly circular, and we should abandon it.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let us turn to an evaluation of coherentism. We will not focus now on arguments for coherentism, because as we saw earlier, these revolve mainly around the alleged failures of foundationalism.

The first argument against coherentism is of course that, as a matter of phenomenological fact, experience and perceptual beliefs enjoy privileged epistemic status.

Now, coherentists respond charge of vicious circularity in one of 2 ways

1: They claim that once the circle becomes large enough, we needn't be bothered by it. But this is patently absurd because it is still a circular argument

2: They adopt holistic coherentism, where beliefs are justified by their relation to the web of beliefs. Now it seems obvious that even holistic coherentism is circular because if only beliefs justify beliefs, then every belief justifies itself in a way. Secondly, it doesn't allow truths of reason or perceptual beliefs to contribute to our web of beliefs. Finally, it clearly severs the relationship between the person and the outside world. This is because for a coherentist, the relationship between beliefs is the only thing that justifies beliefs.

Regarding the last charge, Coherentists have responded in one of 3 ways

1: They deny the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory of truth is the theory of truth where truths are propositions which correspond to reality

2: They say that we can't know the external world anyway because all perception is theory-laden

3: They say that the external world just causes our beliefs.

Regarding the last one, this is a problem because it doesn't allow the external world to play an epistemically relevant role in our beliefs.

There are 2 more problems with Coherentism

The first being that we have no way of differentiating between coherent illusions and coherent, justified beliefs

The second being the isolation plurality problem. There could be two equally coherent sets. A therapist and a patient who believes that he is Jesus. Both sets are coherent, but they are logically incompatible with eachother. They're both justified, and we can't know which one is really true.

That being said and done, we shall close our discussion on the structure of justification, and we shall continue with an analysis of truth and various theories of truth, and then finally we will talk about Religious Epistemology