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9/26/2006
Sober, p. 194 – 199 Beyond Foundationalism
Both Descartes and Hume use foundationalism to prove their arguments. Sober
believes that Hume is only correct if you accept foundationalism. If you do not accept
Sober breaks Hume’s and Descartes’s arguments into three categories. The first
category is indubitable beliefs, such as “I now seem to see a sunrise.” Descartes dealt
with first category beliefs. The second category is present and past observations, such as
“the sun is now rising,” or “the sun rose yesterday.” Both Descartes and Hume dealt with
second category beliefs. The third category is predictions and generalizations, such as,
“the sun will rise tomorrow.” Hume dealt with third category beliefs.
Category one beliefs do not deductively imply or provide evidence for category
two or three beliefs and category two beliefs do not deductively imply or provide
evidence for category three beliefs. Descartes tried to use god as the bridge between
category one and category two. Hume claimed that there is no rational justification
whatsoever that would lead from category two to category three. The reason that they
tried to build one level on top of the other is because they were using foundationalism.
Sober presents an argument that, “You seem to see a printed page in front of you
now,” therefore, “There is a printed page in front of you now.” The first statement is
category one and the second statement is category two. Sober then argues that if you
believe that your senses and environment are ‘normal’ then the argument is true if you
assume that the reliability theory of knowledge is true. If you believe in Descartes’s or
arguments. The argument is that, “I’ve examined lots of emeralds and all have been
green,” therefore, “All emeralds are green.” He then quotes I.J. Good in saying, “Either
there are lots of emeralds, of which 99 percent are green, or there are very few emeralds
and all of them are green.” If you believe Mr. Good then the first statement in the
argument refutes the second. In that case you would believe that, “If you examine lots of
emeralds and all have been found to be green then probably all emeralds are green.” If
assumed, then Hume is right that category two beliefs do not deductively imply category
three beliefs. Sober also says that, if foundationalism is assumed, Descartes is wrong that
Sober says that these arguments are another example of relativity thesis (the first
one he presented was in lecture 14). He says that standards of justification depend on the
audience. Sober says that in everyday life two people can justify things to each other if
they have enough assumptions in common. If speaking to a skeptic, though, you can’t