Cartesian Foundationlism

Foundationalim involves two fundamental claims: (52)

F1.    There are justified basic beliefs
F2.    All justified nonbasic beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to justified basic beliefs.

These assertions prompt the following questions for foundationalists:

QF1.    What are the kinds of things our justified basic beliefs are about?
             Which beliefs are justified and basic?

The Cartesian answer to QF1 “singles out as basic beliefs our beliefs about our own states of mind. Propositions describing what one seems to see, what one thinks, how one feels, etc. are basic.” He “seems to have thought that basic beliefs were in some sense indubitable or free from all possibility of error” (52)  He thought that the one basic belief that we all have is that we exist.  That cannot be taken away from us and cannot be mistaken.  So, from the basic belief that we exist we can deduce everything else.

To Descartes basic beliefs include beliefs about states of mind. 

Appearance beliefs are basic beliefs and they are beliefs about not only how things look, but also about how things sound, taste, feel, and smell.  The proposition that I am in pain is an appearance belief. 

QF2.    How are these basic beliefs justified? If they are not justified by other beliefs, how do they get justified?

The Cartesian answer to this “relies on the idea that the basic beliefs are beliefs in propositions that one cannot doubt. They are said to be indubitable.” (54) They cannot be disbelieved.  For example, if I feel some sort of pain I am justified in believing that I am in pain.  If the pain is the worse I ever had, I am justified in believing that I am going to die. According to Descartes this basic belief should be justified because it is a belief in a proposition that should be not doubted.  This is not acceptable because the inability to doubt that I am in pain “does not make believing it epistemic ally justified.” (54)  The fact that I think am in pain does not justify that I actually am. 

However, in another one of his writings he suggested that “beliefs about our own internal states are beliefs that could not be mistaken..” So the example being that I am in pain is an internal state that is infallible.  So I actually am justified in believing that I am in pain because I cannot be mistaken about my own internal state.

QF3.    What sort of connection must a nonbasic belief have to basic beliefs in order to be justified?

Descartes “claimed that certain elementary beliefs about logical conceptual matters were also basic. Perhaps his idea was that elementary propositions … are the ones that we can see to be true, simply by reflecting on them …  it will suffice to identify this class of basic beliefs as elementary truths of logic … our beliefs in these propositions are also justified basic beliefs.” (54)