Basic Belief and Basic Knowledge

Over the last two decades foundationalism has been severely criticized. In response, various alternatives have been advanced, notably coherentism. At the same time new versions of foundationalism were crafted, that were claimed to be immune to the earlier criticisms. This volume contains 12 essays in which various aspects of this dialectic are covered. A number of contributions continue the trend to defend foundationalism, and foundationalism's commitment to basic beliefs and basic knowledge, against various attacks. Others aim to show that one important objection against coherentism, viz. that the notion of coherence' is too vague to be useful, can be countered. Next to these more general issues related to foundationalism, a number of articles deal with much more specific topics. First, various ones deal with mathematical knowledge, and with the problems attached to the idea of basic mathematical knowledgeproblems that derive in part from Benacerraf's work. Second, various contributors deal with Plantinga's notion of "properly basic belief," criticizing it and at the same time proposing improvements on it. Finally there are essays that deal with the problems of basicality in moral knowledge, testimony, and proprioperception.

Ren van Woudenberg is professor of philosophy at the Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is the Co-Editor of the he "Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid" (2004). Sabine Roeser is an assistant professor at the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. Ron Rood is adjunct professor of philosophy at the Vrije University of Amsterdam.