Epistemology

Foundations

A history of Western epistemology reveals that the principal philosophical occupation has been what American philosopher John Dewey called “the quest for certainty.” A first aspect of this quest, or the search for foundation, has been to align philosophy with other organized bodies of inquiry that were thought to be “certain.” Across millennia, these have included religion, mathematics, logic, and science. During the 20th century, the foundations of knowledge were sought in mathematics, in the natural sciences (especially mathematical physics), and in the structures and uses of language.

A second dimension of the search for foundation has been in posing philosophical systems. Historically, many philosophical systems were posited—with each apparently thought to be the answer to the quest. The idea of a system is that a set of “founding premises” serves as a basis for asking subsequent epistemological questions. Modern but traditional examples include rationalism and empiricism, idealism and realism. Not discussed elsewhere in this encyclopedia, the rationalism of René Descartes serves as an illustration. For him, philosophy is a process in which the mind turns inward seeking foundation through reason. Employing a method of doubting all that he knew, Descartes came to a clear and distinct idea—a truth. Two were revealed: the cogito or consciousness and God. Descartes's framework is the dualistic separate relationship of self and object. With the writings principally of Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant, epistemology rather than metaphysics became central to modern philosophy. In general, questions arising across foundational systems focus on [Page 265]the relationship of person to world and to other persons, of inner immaterial mind or minds and outer material world. Additional questions include source, authority and form of knowledge, process of making a claim, and domain of application.

Perhaps the important philosophical contribution of the past century was to “give up” the quest; that is, to generally acknowledge that there is no one and only one system that founds knowledge. “-Isms” or traditions within philosophy are still posited but with a nonfoundational status. This shift basically occurred through discussions of the related roles of language and truth. A contemporary position known as “foundationalism” still holds that there are basic propositions from which nonbasic propositions can be inferred. Its contrasting position is “coherentism,” the denial of any such base.

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