Why do we hold beliefs? How do we decide what we believe? There may be many different reasons why we hold the beliefs that we do, but for most of the beliefs that we hold there are reasons. This is justification. A belief that is not justified to the holder of that belief in any way is rare. The justification may not be true, but it is there nonetheless.

Justification then, appears to be an important part in allowing us to understanding beliefs from a philosophical perspective. In order to understand how people justify their beliefs, models or theories of justification have been proposed. Foundationalism is one such model. This model states that all justified beliefs in a given individual's belief structure are built upon one single true belief. This helps us to respond to a sceptic who, for each belief we put forward, can ask the question "why do you believe that?" As the sceptic can question any justification, and this leads to an infinite regress, where no final answer is ever reached and no belief is ever proved to the sceptic.

Foundationalism answers this by arguing that all beliefs are built upon a basic self-affirming truth that is accepted as being necessarily true. Thus, the infinite regress is halted, because there is an ultimate justification. Examples of these self-affirming truths include "I think, therefore I am", or "experience yields knowledge". As foundationalism accepts that there is a single, absolute truth then it allows for objective truths and thus true knowledge as any belief can be compared to this absolute standard. This is a significant step in understanding belief structures, as we can picture each belief as being supported by a predecessor, right down to the single truth that supports everything. This is similar to a pyramid resting on its point.

However, a pyramid resting on its point is unstable, and this is one of the key weaknesses of the foundationalists' argument. If the foundational truth can be doubted, then so can all of the rest of the belief structure. In addition, it seems to contradict common sense that every belief that an individual holds might ultimately be based on a single principle that they hold as the truth absolute, as the range and variety of beliefs is so vast.

This is a significant advantage of coherentism, as no obvious single point presents itself for attack by the sceptic. However, this also means that coherentism does not give a response to the problem of the infinite regress. In addition, we lose any concept of objective truths in this model, as all beliefs are ultimately justified by all other beliefs, and so comparisons are purely relative.

In practice, a coherentist might still have a set of core beliefs at the heart of the network, and although it can be argued that these can more easily support the weight of other beliefs, a sceptical attack on these core beliefs can still call into question the whole structure.

Another advantage of coherentism is that it allows for change in a much more organic way. If one belief is disproved, it is possible that only some beliefs around it may be re-evaluated. This allows for gradual change in belief systems. In foundationalism, a belief change at any level requires all beliefs based on that belief to be challenged and possibly disregarded. This may require a significant step-change or paradigm shift. This apparent inflexibility of foundationalism can make belief changes that much more difficult, which may cause justifications and beliefs to become out of step with a rapidly changing set of circumstances.

However, by losing the concept of objective truth, coherentism exposes a weakness to deception. A successful lie will itself be coherent, and may be supported by a range of evidence in order better convince others. Once a series of self-supporting lies have been introduced into the belief system, it is possible to use those to support further lies. Even if not being deliberately deceived there is an aspect to coherentism that does not promote the challenging of accepted beliefs. If a belief fits into the overall structure, then it is successfully justified by the coherantist. This can lead to false assumptions being generally accepted for thousands of years, such as the earth is flat.

As coherence, not truth, is the requirement for justification, justifications are not questioned beyond the level of immediate experience by the coherentist. This could be argued to preclude knowledge, as truth is seen in some theories to be a pre-cursor for knowledge.

Therefore, we can say that whilst foundationalism has weaknesses it does provide an adequate system of justification, because it seeks the truth, which allows for knowledge. However, coherentism may be the better model of the actual belief structures held by the majority of people.

Tutor: Oliver McAdoo MA

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