I found this post valuable for stating an (apparently popular on LW) coherentist view pretty succinctly. But its dismissal of foundationalism seems way too quick:
It’s not at all “pretty clear” to me that “any foundations are also subject to justificatory work”. Foundationalist philosophers don’t pick arbitrary beliefs (or seemings/appearances/etc.) to call foundational. They try to identify foundations that seem intuitively to (1) not be the sort of thing that requires justification, and (2) provide justification for non-foundational beliefs.
Fair enough if one doesn’t find the arguments for such foundations persuasive. But I would think one should engage at least a bit with those arguments in a post like this.
There seems to be a misunderstanding of what foundationalism entails, in this quote: “We’re not going to find a set of axioms which just seem obvious to all humans once articulated. Rather, there’s some work to be done to make them seem obvious.” Foundationalists don’t deny this — something can be foundational in the sense of requiring no further justification when you fully understand it, without being obvious before you fully understand it.[1]
Relevant quote from Nye (2015): “The methodological approach I defend maintains that the direct plausibility or implausibility of principles about the ethical relevance of various factors is foundational in normative and practical ethics. This does not mean that appearances of direct plausibility are infallible. Principles often seem plausible only because we are making confusions and do not fully appreciate what they are really saying. On the approach I defend, much of the business of ethical reasoning consists in correcting erroneous appearances of plausibility by clarifying the content of principles, making crucial distinctions, and discovering alternatives with greater direct plausibility. Nor does the claim that the direct plausibility of principles is foundational mean that we should begin our ethical reasoning by considering only which principles seem plausible. The principles that turn out to be most plausible on reflection might be suggested to us only by first considering our intuitions about a variety of cases and then seeing which of them can be justified by principles that, once formulated and clarified, are directly plausible.”
I found this post valuable for stating an (apparently popular on LW) coherentist view pretty succinctly. But its dismissal of foundationalism seems way too quick:
It’s not at all “pretty clear” to me that “any foundations are also subject to justificatory work”. Foundationalist philosophers don’t pick arbitrary beliefs (or seemings/appearances/etc.) to call foundational. They try to identify foundations that seem intuitively to (1) not be the sort of thing that requires justification, and (2) provide justification for non-foundational beliefs.
Fair enough if one doesn’t find the arguments for such foundations persuasive. But I would think one should engage at least a bit with those arguments in a post like this.
There seems to be a misunderstanding of what foundationalism entails, in this quote: “We’re not going to find a set of axioms which just seem obvious to all humans once articulated. Rather, there’s some work to be done to make them seem obvious.” Foundationalists don’t deny this — something can be foundational in the sense of requiring no further justification when you fully understand it, without being obvious before you fully understand it.[1]
Relevant quote from Nye (2015): “The methodological approach I defend maintains that the direct plausibility or implausibility of principles about the ethical relevance of various factors is foundational in normative and practical ethics. This does not mean that appearances of direct plausibility are infallible. Principles often seem plausible only because we are making confusions and do not fully appreciate what they are really saying. On the approach I defend, much of the business of ethical reasoning consists in correcting erroneous appearances of plausibility by clarifying the content of principles, making crucial distinctions, and discovering alternatives with greater direct plausibility. Nor does the claim that the direct plausibility of principles is foundational mean that we should begin our ethical reasoning by considering only which principles seem plausible. The principles that turn out to be most plausible on reflection might be suggested to us only by first considering our intuitions about a variety of cases and then seeing which of them can be justified by principles that, once formulated and clarified, are directly plausible.”