THE “ABSURDITY” OF FOUNDATIONS

Foundationalism has drawn fire repeatedly of late and stands multiply accused of itself resting on no better foundation than a “myth of the given,” and of requiring the evident absurdity of a “test” that compares our beliefs with reality itself in the absence of any intermediary concepts or beliefs. A recent salvo was fired by Donald Davidson in an important essay. Let us now examine the damage.

Davidson's “Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge” argues both against foundations and in favor of coherence. It attacks foundationalism for requiring a confrontation intrinsically absurd, and it objects to specific foundational “sources of justification” outside the scope of our beliefs. That is on the negative. On the affirmative, it presents and defends a coherentist alternative.

An allegedly foundationalist idea, that of “confrontation between what we believe and reality” is first argued to be “absurd,” thus opening the way for coherentism, subsequently offered as the alternative.

In explanation and support we are referred to Rorty, who claims that “nothing counts as justification unless by reference to what we already accept, and there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so as to find some test other than coherence.”