1544. Mourad observes, to my mind helpfully . . .

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Mourad observes, to my mind helpfully, that "[t]he term 'foundationalism' can be used in a narrow and a broad sense. In the narrow sense, 'foundationalism' refers to the modern classical view that subjects ought to accept only beliefs that are self-evident, about one's own immediate experience, or appropriately based on beliefs of these kinds. In the broad sense, . . . the 'foundationalist . . . starts from the distinction between beliefs we accept in the basic way and those we accept on the evidential basis of other beliefs. . . . His idea is that every belief is either basic or accepted on the basis of other beliefs. . . ; he adds that in a correct or healthy human system of beliefs, there are basic beliefs, and every nonbasic belief will be accepted on the basis of other beliefs that offer evidential support for it, in such a way that every belief is supported, finally, by basic beliefs, beliefs in the foundations. These beliefs, of course, are not accepted on the basis of others; the basis relation is finite and terminates in the foundations."

"A belief is 'properly basic' if it is warranted to some degree and not based on other beliefs. The difference between the classical foundationalist [i.e., the foundationalist in the narrow sense] and [what Plantinga calls] the generic foundationalist [i.e., the foundationalist in the broad sense] is that the former does and the latter does not specify which types of belief are properly basic" (Transcendental Arguments and Justified Christian Beliefs: 48 f; cf. Plantinga's interpretation of the "classical picture" of justification, which Mourad cites on 53: "A person S is justified in accepting a belief p if and only if either (1) p is properly basic for S, that is[,] self-evident, incorrigible, or Lockeanly evident to the senses for S, or (2) S believes p on the evidential basis of propositions that are properly basic and that evidently support p deductively, inductively, or abductively"). 

Clearly, if I'm a foundationalist, I'm no more a "classical foundationalist" than Plantinga is, because I do not specify which types of belief are properly basic. Mourad recognizes this when he says, "Ogden does not explicitly propound a Cartesian or Lockean theory of justification. In fact, his general principle of credibility is explicitly neutral to competing theories of justification, since it suggests that substantive epistemic principles are always type-specific" (122).

10 August 2006