Michael Daniel

9/26/2006
Sober, p. 194 – 199 Beyond Foundationalism

Descartes’s and Hume’s philosophies can be refuted by refuting foundationalism.

Both Descartes and Hume use foundationalism to prove their arguments. Sober

believes that Hume is only correct if you accept foundationalism. If you do not accept

foundationalism then Hume was wrong.

Sober breaks Hume’s and Descartes’s arguments into three categories. The first

category is indubitable beliefs, such as “I now seem to see a sunrise.” Descartes dealt

with first category beliefs. The second category is present and past observations, such as

“the sun is now rising,” or “the sun rose yesterday.” Both Descartes and Hume dealt with

second category beliefs. The third category is predictions and generalizations, such as,

“the sun will rise tomorrow.” Hume dealt with third category beliefs.

Category one beliefs do not deductively imply or provide evidence for category

two or three beliefs and category two beliefs do not deductively imply or provide

evidence for category three beliefs. Descartes tried to use god as the bridge between

category one and category two. Hume claimed that there is no rational justification

whatsoever that would lead from category two to category three. The reason that they

tried to build one level on top of the other is because they were using foundationalism.

Sober presents an argument that, “You seem to see a printed page in front of you

now,” therefore, “There is a printed page in front of you now.” The first statement is

category one and the second statement is category two. Sober then argues that if you

believe that your senses and environment are ‘normal’ then the argument is true if you

assume that the reliability theory of knowledge is true. If you believe in Descartes’s or

Hume’s foundationalism then the statement would be false.

 Sober then presents another argument to connect category two to category three

arguments. The argument is that, “I’ve examined lots of emeralds and all have been

green,” therefore, “All emeralds are green.” He then quotes I.J. Good in saying, “Either

there are lots of emeralds, of which 99 percent are green, or there are very few emeralds

and all of them are green.” If you believe Mr. Good then the first statement in the

argument refutes the second. In that case you would believe that, “If you examine lots of

emeralds and all have been found to be green then probably all emeralds are green.” If

you believe the assumptions of Hume then the argument is false.

Sober argues that foundationalism leads to skepticism. If foundationalism is

assumed, then Hume is right that category two beliefs do not deductively imply category

three beliefs. Sober also says that, if foundationalism is assumed, Descartes is wrong that

category one beliefs can deductively imply category two beliefs.

Sober says that these arguments are another example of relativity thesis (the first

one he presented was in lecture 14). He says that standards of justification depend on the

audience. Sober says that in everyday life two people can justify things to each other if

they have enough assumptions in common. If speaking to a skeptic, though, you can’t

rationally convince them that any proposition is true.