On Foundationalism: A Strategy for Metaphysical Realism

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright © 2004 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rockmore, Tom, 1942On foundationalism : a strategy for metaphysical realism / Tom Rockmore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7425-3427-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Foundationalism (Theory of knowledge) 2. Realism. I. Title. BD238.F68 R63 2004 149—dc22

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Contents

Introduction: On Realism and Foundationalism

1

1

Realism, Platonic Realism, Truth, and Knowledge

13

2

Epistemological Foundationalism

45

3

Foundationalism as a System

63

4

Foundationalism as Representationalism

87

5

On Recent Foundationalism

109

Index

141

About the Author

147

Introduction On Realism and Foundationalism

F

oundationalism and realism are obviously related. Foundationalism is an epistemological strategy for knowledge of the real, or reality; in short, the way the world is. The real can be understood in different ways. One approach, which rests on the claim to know the real as it is, is often known as metaphysical realism. This view, which, following Peirce, I call ontological metaphysics,1 or metaphysical realism, includes many different versions of the familiar idea that under the proper conditions it is possible to know independent objects and the world as it is. Metaphysical realism, which is a natural but naive view, is less a successful theory than an attitude, a mere state of mind, which has been remarkably persistent since it was first formulated in the West in ancient Greece but which must be rejected in all its many forms. When one gives it up, one naturally arrives at the constructivist alternative, the best view we have, which sharply rejects metaphysical realism on the grounds that, as Kant writes, "reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own." 2 In ancient times, the main approaches to metaphysical realism were intuitive. In modem times, foundationalism has replaced intuition as the main strategy for developing metaphysical realist claims to know. This is an essay on foundationalism as a strategy for metaphysical realism. I argue that foundationalism fails in all its known variants. I further argue that Kant plays a crucial role in this regard. Kant's complex position is both foundationalist and antifoundationalist, both committed to metaphysical

realism and, through its commitment to empirical realism, opposed to metaphysical realism. Before Kant, it made eminent sense to be committed to eventually making out a claim for metaphysical realism by formulating an acceptable version of foundationalism. After Kant, it no longer makes sense even to try to do so. Though currently not as popular as it has been in the past, foundationalism still has important defenders3 and remains the main modern strategy for knowledge of the way the world is; in short, the mind-independent real, or reality. The present state of the epistemological debate is confused and confusing. Claims for knowledge are correlated with conceptions of the real as distinguished from the empirical real, or what is given in experience. At present there seem to be four main claims about the real: claims for direct knowledge, foundationalist claims, mere assertions unsupported by claims for direct knowledge or foundationalism, and skepticism. In focusing on foundationalism, one aim is to call attention to the importance at the present time of Immanuel Kant for the epistemological debate. I contend that after Kant it no longer makes sense to defend epistemological foundationalism as a strategy to develop metaphysical realist claims for knowledge. The story I tell is Kantian in spirit but not in letter. It differs from Kant in at least three main ways. Kant's critical philosophy is both foundationalist and antifoundationalist. I draw out the antifoundationalist implications of his famous, often-mentioned, but still little understood Copernican revolution in philosophy for opposing epistemological foundationalism of all kinds. In his antifoundationalist moments, Kant rejects any effort to know the mind-independent world as it is—in his terminology, things in themselves—in favor of empirical realism. I defend Kant's empirical realism against the metaphysical form of realism, which was popular before and remains popular after him. In doing so, I consider the history of the philosophical debate in some detail in a way that Kant never does. Kant further contends that after the critical philosophy, the problem of knowledge has been fully and finally solved (or resolved). I believe, on the contrary, that this problem has not and probably never will be solved but that Kant's contribution is decisive in helping us to give up a main strategy for knowledge that is still widely represented in the present debate. The understanding of realism, hence its relation to theory of knowledge, has greatly evolved over time. R. J. Hirst draws attention to the transition from medieval realism, which was opposed to nominalism, and the opposition that later arose in modern philosophy, say since Kant, between realism and idealism:

In the early history of philosophy, particularly in medieval thought, the term "realism" was used, in opposition to nominalism, for the doctrine that universals have a real, objective existence. In modern philosophy, however, it is used for the view that material objects exist externally to us and independently of our sense experience. Realism is thus opposed to idealism, which holds that no such material objects or external realities exist apart from our knowledge or consciousness of them, the whole universe thus being dependent on the mind or in some sense mental. It also clashes with phenomenalism, which, while avoiding much idealist metaphysics, would deny that material objects exist except as groups or sequences of sensa, actual and possible.4 Hirst's description is controversial since it sees idealism and realism, which some, for instance Kant and the entire German idealist tradition, see as compatible doctrines under certain conditions, as utterly opposed in all their forms. Hirst's description, which captures a metaphysical view of realism to which many others are committed,5 reflects the deeply entrenched conviction that idealism and realism are opposing doctrines and that idealism is incompatible with realism.6 This claim was influentially formulated for analytic philosophy a century ago in Moore's charge that idealism of all kinds is committed to denying the existence of the external world.7 This charge assumes that there is idealism in general, that all idealists of whatever kind are committed to a common doctrine, and that this doctrine can be refuted through a single argument. Yet it is arguable that there is no idealism in general, hence, that idealism in general does not deny the existence of the external world, that no important idealist ever defended this view, and that there is no single argument, or set of arguments, that counts against idealism in general. Certainly some forms of idealism are compatible with some forms of realism. Thus, Kant's critical philosophy combines empirical realism and transcendental idealism. Yet the conviction that realism and idealism are true opposites is an important cause of the enduring antipathy to idealism, which has been a main current in analytic philosophy ever since it took root in England. The possible clash between realism and phenomenalism is less important, since, except for historians of philosophy, few philosophers are presently committed to any form of sense-datum theory. For purposes of this book, I understand "realism" in a similar but slightly narrower way than Hirst to refer to the doctrine that in knowing we know the mind-independent external world as it is. As I understand it, this doctrine includes the related ideas that knowledge consists of

knowing the mind-independent external world, that there is a mindindependent external world that is knowable, and that under certain specifiable conditions it is in fact known as it is. Understood in this way, "realism" refers to the mind-independent external world, or to the "world" as it was understood by, say, Aristotle and Rene Descartes. It also includes more recent approaches to subjectivity in which the human mind is held to be knowable and in fact known in just the same way, and to the degree, that earlier philosophers laid claim to knowledge of mind-independent reality. Kant and, more recently, various philosophers of mind such as Wilfrid Sellars and linguists such as Noam Chomsky claim to know the mind in the same way and to the degree that, say, Descartes and classical British empiricists claim to know the mind-independent real as it is. There are different strategies for knowing the mind-independent real as it is. One strategy, which is found in both ancient Greek and modern philosophy, consists of some form of intuitionism, or the claim for a direct, immediate grasp of the mind-independent real as it is.8 A second strategy has become known as epistemological foundationalism. Foundationalism is widely identified with Descartes but by no means limited to his position or to those influenced by him. Like realism, foundationalism takes many forms and is deeply rooted in early Greek philosophy. Foundationalism is most easily described in terms of an ideal-typical form. By "foundationalism" I mean an epistemological strategy that consists of relating claims to know to a foundation, which is asserted to be true, from which the remainder of the theory can be (rigorously) deduced and which can be correctly applied to yield knowledge of the mind-independent real as it is. And I understand "the real" to refer to things in the world and, by extension, the world as well as the nature of the human mind. Forms of foundationalism are widely disseminated throughout the history of Western philosophy, especially the modern tradition. Foundationalism is arguably the main modern strategy for knowledge. It is sometimes mistakenly thought that interest in foundationalism has waned, or at least recently waned, and that it is no longer a live option. On the contrary, foundationalism, which was widely popular throughout the modern period, remains popular, although not always under that name, even today at the beginning of the new century. Moore and Russell, the founders of analytic philosophy in England, defend forms of foundationalism. Distantly following Thomas Reid, Moore's commonsensism consists of the doctrine that there is direct intuition of empirical reality. This is the basis of his refutation of the supposed idealist denial of the existence of the external world.

Russell's distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance presupposes direct acquaintance with what is as it is.9 Though foundationalism has been very popular over the centuries, many philosophers were and are uninterested in or even opposed to it in any form. Classical American pragmatism was invented by C. S. Peirce as an approach to knowledge based on the rejection of epistemological foundationalism in its Cartesian form. Peirce criticized Cartesian foundationalism in a classic series of articles in the 1880s. Empiricism of different kinds has long been related to foundationalism. Since Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of Moore,10 the critique of classical British empiricism and its more recent avatars has become a main theme in later analytic thought in Wittgenstein, Sellars, W. V. O. Quine, Donald Davidson, and, most recently, Richard Rorty. Though often criticized, foundationalism has never been entirely abandoned. Efforts to refute it in whole or in part or to refute different forms of the overall foundationalist strategy are routinely met by counterefforts to formulate a viable form of the doctrine. Foundationalism is arguably as widespread as an epistemological strategy to know the mind-independent real at present as it has been in recent times, even in modern times, and perhaps is as widespread as it has ever been. Recent epistemological foundationalists include (in no particular order) the early Rudolf Carnap (and some other members of the Vienna Circle), Roderick Chisholm, K.-O. Apel (and Jiirgen Habermas), Susan Haack, Lawrence Bonjour, Richard Swinburne, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, and many others. This account will focus on two main points with respect to the concealed history and potential viability of foundationalist epistemological strategy. It is not by chance that the history of foundationalism is concealed. The suggestion of the need for an ahistorical approach to knowledge that turns away from, even ignores, prior efforts in the tradition is intrinsic to epistemological foundationalism, in which claims to know are held to grasp what is as it is without regard to time and place and, in a way, beyond the possible need for later revision. An ahistorical approach to knowledge implies that the formulation of an adequate epistemological strategy is not directly dependent on prior efforts, say prior types of foundationalism. Descartes, the prototypical modern foundationalist, suggests the need to begin again from the beginning as if no one had ever considered the problem of knowledge before him. Although such ancient Greek figures as Plato and Aristotle take into account and attempt to build on their predecessors' views, the Cartesian approach suggests the utter irrelevance of the history of philosophy for philosophy. This inference has

been widely influential in later philosophy, where the disregard and lack of awareness of prior positions tends to go hand in hand with the effort to formulate a viable form of foundationalism. It is surprising, since foundationalism is widely invoked explicitly, or at least tacitly through claims to know that seem to require this type of strategy, that relatively little is known about it. Studies of foundationalism focus mainly on formulating an acceptable form theory as opposed to the history of prior attempts to do so.11 A recovery of the concealed history of foundationalist epistemology can be expected to serve several purposes. One is to show that this approach is not new but develops continuously over more than two millenia. It is already clearly present, although not under that name, in ancient Greek philosophy in the positions of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and others. The Parmenidean way of truth, according to which knowing and being are the same (to gar auto noein estin te kai einai) apparently rests on the grasp of unchangeable being.12 Another purpose is to point out the large amount of repetition that inevitably arises from the consistent tendency of those interested in epistemological foundationalism to treat the problem of knowledge as a research program in Lakatos's sense in that it is assumed that to know is to know reality and that the only relevant question concerns the formulation of an adequate form of the general foundationalist epistemological strategy. The second task is to examine the prospects for foundationalism after centuries of effort to formulate a viable form of this epistemological strategy. It is crucial here to notice the link between foundationalism, realism, and a normative conception of knowledge. "Knowledge" can be understood in different ways. There are obvious differences between, say, claims to know based on a grasp of what is as it is or on reasoning to the best explanation or on coherence, as in a coherence theory of truth, or on justification added to true belief, and so on. A commitment to a specific normative type of knowledge brings with it a commitment to a specific epistemological strategy. Thus, C. S. Peirce's description of the knowing process as motivated by and proceeding from doubt to belief presupposes that claims to know are not and cannot be apodictic, or unrevisable. Peirce's conception of knowledge as in principle always revisable eschews any claim to know reality as it is. According to Peirce, "reality" refers to what emerges in the long run as the result of following the process of epistemological inquiry.13 In limiting himself to a conception of the object of knowledge in terms of its effects,14 he takes an operational view of reality as opposed to a cognitive grasp of what is as it is.

This commitment is entirely different in foundationalism. Foundationalism in all its forms aims toward knowledge of metaphysical reality; that is, toward a type of knowledge that those committed to a foundationalist approach take as an unexamined but normative standard of what it means to know. Those who accept the view that some form of foundationalism offers the best available epistemological strategy also accept the idea that only knowledge of the mind-independent real as it is can count as knowledge. Anything less, anything falling below this level, cannot be knowledge in the sense that those committed to the success of the foundationalist epistemological strategy understand "knowledge." Foundationalism, like ice cream, comes in many flavors. The core commitment that unites different forms of foundationalism as variations on a single theme lies in the view that to know is to know metaphysical reality. If it could be shown that in principle the mind-independent real cannot be known, that one cannot make sense of the claim to know what is as it is, then it would follow that not only has no as-yet-undiscovered formulation of epistemological foundationalism been successful but also that none could even possibly be successful. Kant is a crucial figure in this regard. His position includes a series of incompatible, contradictory commitments. He is simultaneously committed to epistemological foundationalism and, through what is widely known as his Copernican revolution in philosophy, to antifoundationalist epistemology. Kant's commitment to foundationalism is visible in different ways in the critical philosophy, including his proposed deduction of a univocal categorical framework which, in his opinion, is the condition of the possibility of experience and knowledge of objects. This type of knowledge depends, according to the critical philosophy, on invariant knowledge of the human mind as it is. He is committed, on the contrary, to antifoundationalism through his claim, central to his Copernican turn, that we must in some sense "construct" what we know as a necessary condition of knowing it. This claim commits Kant to a constructivist approach to knowledge as well as to the view that we cannot claim to know what is as it is. Earlier I pointed out that foundationalism presupposes a realist conception of knowledge. Since Kant's Copernican turn undermines any claim to know the mind-independent external world as it is, it also counts against the very possibility of a successful form of epistemological foundationalism. The discussion begins with a series of remarks about early Greek predecessors of what later became epistemological realism in modern philosophy. The many different views of reality in ancient Greece all depend on

bringing the mind into contact with what is as it is.15 Metaphysical realism, which is presupposed in Parmenides, is apparently already well developed in Plato. Metaphysical realism is closely identified with Platonism, the approach to knowledge based on the theory of ideas routinely attributed to Plato, according to which to know is to know the mindindependent real. In referring to Platonic realism, I have in mind a particularly influential form of metaphysical realism. The contemporary epistemological debate offers a series of variants on Platonic realism. These include direct, indirect, naive, critical, representative, new, and psychological varieties. These and other forms of modern realism appear to have two main characteristics. On the one hand, there is the idea of a permanent, mind-independent, external real. Thus, metaphysical realism has been described as the view that "the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects." 16 Scientific realism is characterized as the view that entities posited by scientific theories exist,17 which in the context of contemporary microphysical theory means that there really are subatomic particles such as positrons and quarks. On the other hand, there is the claim that, under suitable conditions, the mind can come into contact with the real which, hence, can be known as it is. This conviction is common to ancient Greek philosophy, which in that sense is deeply realist, as well as to such modern tendencies as rationalism and classical empiricism. 18 There is a difference between conceptions of mind-independent reality and strategies leading to knowledge of it. The second chapter distinguishes two main epistemological strategies for knowledge of what is as it is. One strategy, which I call intuitionism, depends on direct but private intuition of the real. This strategy, which is employed throughout ancient philosophy and by such modern figures as Benedict Spinoza as well as Edmund Husserl and phenomenologists influenced by him, fails to meet the modern commitment to public standards of knowledge. The widespread modern disaffection with an intuitive approach to claims to know is partly responsible for the wholesale investment in the replacement strategy of epistemological foundationalism as formulated in Descartes and many others. This alternative epistemological strategy, already anticipated in antiquity, shares with Greek intuitionism the misplaced hope that we can still claim to bring the mind into cognitive contact with the real. The second chapter clarifies, reconstructs, and evaluates epistemological foundationalism as a replacement strategy for bringing the mind in contact with reality in a variety of modern authors. As concerns founda-

tionalism, I argue for continuity between early Greek philosophy and the modern tradition. I point to continuity in this respect between Greek philosophy and the modern philosophical tradition. There is a distinction between foundationalism in general, conceptions of system, and representationalism. Chapter three studies selected modern views of systematic philosophy, with special attention to the turn from foundationalist, or founded, to unfounded, that is, afoundationalist, nonfoundationalist, or antifoundationalist conceptions of system in Kant's wake. I argue that nonfoundationalist, antifoundationalist, or postfoundationalist systems, in short approaches that reject foundationalism as an appropriate standpoint, are independent of it, hence unaffected by its fortunes. It is perfectly possible to reject foundationalism while retaining the idea of system as central to rigorous philosophy, even to rigorous thought of all kinds. Modern epistemological foundationalism depends on representationalism, or the claim to correctly represent the way the world is, the focus of the fourth chapter. Epistemological battles have often been waged in the conceptual space between appearance and reality. The ancient Greeks were concerned with choosing among various appearances of a single world whose reality was never doubted. A similar assumption is widely made in recent times by philosophers such as Putnam in his internal realist phase and scientists such as Stephen Weinberg, who believe, in refuting the views of Thomas Kuhn, that science reveals the world as it really is. In introducing hyperbolic doubt, Descartes undermines the simple, but also simplistic, Greek realist assumption that continues to hold sway throughout the modern debate. After Descartes, modern philosophers are confronted with the problem that Kant appropriately characterizes as the relation of the representation to the object. This problem confronts anyone committed to foundationalism. The inability to show that representations represent proves fatal to foundationalist hopes. Neither Descartes nor Kant nor indeed any later thinker has resolved the representational enigma. Later discussions of knowledge typically insist on foundationalism while ignoring the lesson of Kant's inability to formulate a plausible analysis of representation. Chapter five reviews prominent recent forms of foundationalism, with special attention to Carnap, Chisholm, Apel, Bonjour, and Haack. Later forms of foundationalism do not improve on, but rather fall below, Kant's level. While foundationalism cannot be ruled out on a priori grounds, after several centuries of concentrated effort, there is no longer any reason to think that it is even potentially viable.

After foundationalism, after two and a half millenia of effort, there is still no generally acceptable way to argue for Platonic or later forms of metaphysical realism, no way to show that the mind in fact really comes into cognitive contact with reality. Three reactions are possible. One is to continue to pursue the foundationalist strategy, which no longer seems likely to succeed. Those uninterested in the history of the foundationalist discussion are unlikely to draw a negative inference from the prior debate; they are likely to think that if there is a solution it must lie in yet another, better formulation of the foundationalist strategy. Examples include the foundationalist view of language favored by Michael Dummett and the foundationalist form of phenomenological essentialism favored by Husserl. A second attitude, which Richard Rorty illustrates, lies in giving up theory of knowledge as a hopeless task for which all the main gambits have already been tried out and discarded. His skeptical conclusion derives from the conviction that since epistemological foundationalism fails, there is no way to show that the mind comes into contact with reality, hence there is nothing interesting to say about knowledge. Yet the way to continue theory of knowledge is to realign it on a normative conception of truth and knowledge which, although unfamiliar to Plato's children, is well known to most others engaged in cognitive pursuits. Kant's Copernican revolution helps us to abandon the idea that we know reality in favor of his proposed "constructivist" alternative, which was later developed by G. W. E Hegel, Karl Marx, Wilhelm Dilthey, and others, according to which we know only what we ourselves in some way "construct." Philosophers from Plato to the early Wittgenstein routinely call attention to a distinction between the philosophical subject and human beings. According to the early Wittgenstein, the subject is not a human being and is not in the world but is the limit of the world. Yet only human beings have knowledge and human beings are in the world. I have found it useful to consider the sources of realism in the early Greek tradition, including Plato, in what I call Platonic realism. The interpretation of Plato's corpus is a highly specialized task that is unlike the discussion of Platonic realism. I am concerned with the contours of an extremely influential conception of truth and knowledge that finds an early formulation in the Republic, which is the great sourcebook of the Western philosophical tradition but whose precise relation to Plato's own position cannot now be determined. I will close this introduction with a comment about "hermeneutics," a synonym for "interpretation." The term "hermeneutics," which is beginning to appear in the writings of analytic philosophers such as John McDowell, 19 is still more frequent in the writings of continental philoso-

phers such as Gadamer, who regards it as universal. Rorty, who is silently committed to Platonism in its modern Cartesian form, claims contra Gadamer that hermeneutics is not a successor to epistemology. The quarrel, then, is not between foundationalism or hermeneutics but rather between different views of the role of interpretation in knowledge, different views of perspective. To give up the fruitless appeal to Platonic realism points to the epistemological interest of hermeneutics. If "epistemology" means "knowing the way the independent world is," then it can have no successor since there is no way to know that one knows the mind-independent real. Yet if "epistemology" means no more than "the interpretation of experience, which is justified, to the extent that such justification is possible, by the standards in use in a given cognitive domain," then epistemology as hermeneutics presents itself as a viable successor to the traditional view of epistemology—indeed as the most likely approach at the start of the new century. Rorty understands hermeneutics as a struggle against commensurability, or the idea that there is or even could be a single, agreed-on set of rules to settle disputes by reaching rational agreement.20 We ordinarily reach rational agreement in the cognitive disciplines by applying the cognitive strategies already at our disposal and by inventing new ones. Skepticism dependent on any doubt whatsoever, on the undeniable failure to know the way the world is, cannot, but also need not, be answered. In practice, we agree for a time on views arrived at through the proper use of the best techniques we currently possess in an endless conversation. Rorty comprehends epistemology and hermeneutics as approaches that are not in competition with each other but are mutually supportive.211 view them as sharply opposed as epistemology is usually understood but as indistinguishable when it is redefined on interpretive grounds. For after foundationalism, and after we give up the very idea of knowing the way the world is, epistemology understood as a theory of knowledge that acknowledges the historical limits of human cognition offers the best chance to develop a viable theory of knowledge.

NOTES 1. See "What Is Pragmatism," in The Essential Peirce, edited by Nathan Houser and Nathan Kloesel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 11:338. 2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B xiii, p. 109.

3. For a recent entry in the continuing foundationalist sweepstakes, see Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2001).

4. R. J. Hirst, "Realism," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards (New York and London: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1967), VII:77. 5. See, for example, Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 13. 6. This popular view is restated by Davidson. See Donald Davidson, Subjective, Inter subjective, Objective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 185,191. 7. See G. E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," Mind, New Series, 12, no. 48 (October 1903): 433-53. 8. A version of this well-known claim for immediate knowledge has recently been restated by Putnam. See Hilary Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 9. See "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description," in Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957), 202-24. 10. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 11. See Paul Moser, Knowledge and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 12. For discussion in the context of the concept of identity, see "The Principle of Identity," in Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, translated by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 22-42. 13. See "How To Make Our Ideas Clear," in The Essential Peirce, edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 124^1, esp. 136-41. 14. See "How To Make Our Ideas Clear," 132. 15. See Burnyeat, "Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed," The Philosophical Review XCI, no. 1 (January 1982): 18-19. 16. See Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 49. 17. See Wilfrid Sellars, cited in Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 7. 18. Richard Rorty, in Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, introduction by Richard Rorty, study guide by Robert Brandom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 10. 19. See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 20. See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 316. 21. See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 346.

Realism, Platonic Realism, Truth, and Knowledge

T

he shortest way to describe Western philosophy is to say that it is and always has been Platonism. Platonism combines idealism, or Platonic idealism, with a specific form of realism. This chapter will be devoted to realism in general, especially to what I call Platonic realism. This doctrine, which is the canonical source of the persistent conviction that to know is to cognize reality as it is, is an influential, widespread, persistent approach to truth and knowledge that originates in ancient Greece and, under different names, continues to dominate Western philosophy.

MOORE, IDEALISM, AND THE SUPPOSED SHIFT TO REALISM In defining realism as the opposite of idealism, analytic philosophy routinely links its stress on metaphysical realism with an incorrect depiction of idealism as nonrealist or antirealist. Although it declined strong, or metaphysical, realism, beginning with Kant, German idealism, which was never opposed to realism, embraced empirical realism. Realism, which has never been absent from the debate, made a strong comeback as part of the rise of analytic philosophy. AngloAmerican analytic philosophy arose in England at the beginning of

the twentieth century in part in reaction to idealism in general, which was then and still is widely misunderstood as denying the existence of the external world, hence as incompatible with realism in any meaningful sense of the term. In Kant's wake, different forms of idealism played a dominant role in philosophical debate during much of the nineteenth century in Germany, France, and England virtually throughout the nineteenth century. In England, British idealism arose beginning in 1865 in response to J. H. Stirling's study of The Secret of Hegel,1,2 in the same year in which the appearance of Otto Liebmann's work on Kant and His Epigones started a return to Kant. 3 British idealism, which rapidly developed under the influence of such important figures as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, John McTaggart, and Bernard Bosanquet, was always distant from German idealism, including Hegel. It represented an effort to domesticate certain insights borrowed from or inspired by German idealists to the English philosophical environment, The relation of the British idealists to Hegel was very variable. 4 Green, who sharply criticized Hume, was closer to Kant than to Hegel. Bradley, who emphasized a conception of the absolute leading to a view of reality as intrinsically spiritual and arguably distant from anything Hegel defends, was very critical of Green's view of relations. McTaggart, who formulated a deductive form of metaphysics in a distinctly non-Hegelian style, was an atheist strongly opposed to Bradley's view of the absolute. Moore and Russell, who came to philosophical maturity in a debate dominated by British idealism, were initially under McTaggart's sway and, at least in Russell's case, initially sympathetic to Hegel. But they quickly revolted against idealism in all its many forms. The most influential document in the early analytic revolt against idealism, which belongs to the founding acts of analytic philosophy in England, is Moore's famous, still very influential, and certainly seldom-read screed, "The Refutation of Idealism." 5 Moore's effort presupposes the failure of Kant's earlier attempt to refute idealism. Kant, who professed a form of idealism, was concerned with defeating "bad" idealism, which he equated with denying the existence of the external world. 6 In taking up Kant's fight, Moore was concerned with defeating "idealism" as such. Moore's commonsensism is a form of traditional English empiricism, which for Moore takes the form of the claim, supposedly antithetical to idealism, that the mind-independent external world exists.

Like Kant, Moore is interested in defeating any effort to cast doubt on the existence of the external world, something he mistakenly associates with idealism. Yet he overlooks Kant's own concerted effort to refute "bad" idealism with idealism when he insists on the existence of the external world as the necessary condition of experience of whatever kind. Moore was concerned with this theme over many years, from his early "The Refutation of Idealism" (1903) through "Is Existence a Predicate?" (1936) and "Proof of an External World" (1939). For Moore, the problem was always the same. He was convinced that idealists asserted very queer claims about the world that were unlike the ordinary view he asserts against them in fundamental ways. Moore begins "The Refutation of Idealism" by claiming that for modern idealism, the universe is spiritual. 7 For Moore, who disputes Berkeley's view that esse is percipi, the latter represents modern idealism in general. 8 Moore maintains contra Berkeley (and all other idealists) that to be is not be perceived. Since sensation is always sensation of something, 9 he further denies contra Bradley that what is experienced is identical with the experience. 10 According to Moore, we are always already outside spirit. 11 Hence the world is real, and in knowledge we know the real world as it is. When Moore was writing, idealism and realism were already understood, as they are widely understood today, as competing, incompatible doctrines. His very influential attack on idealism was a major factor in a rapid shift in English philosophical circles from idealism in the direction of analytic philosophy. Since history is written by the victors, the victory of analytic philosophy in England turned attention away from the dominant tendency in English-language philosophy in the direction of its younger competitor. This shift played a significant role in the rise of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, a philosophical tendency that, like Marxism, has always understood itself to be defined by its commitment to strong metaphysical realism and, until recently, in opposition to idealism. A distinction needs to be drawn between Moore's critique of idealism, the analytic turn from idealism to realism, and the defense of realism. Moore is widely regarded as overcoming idealism in all its forms in favor of realism, which is often, but superficially, thought to be incompatible with idealism. 12 Moore's attack on idealism presupposes that in all its many forms it denies the existence of the external world, that it is an untenable doctrine, however it is formulated, that

flies in the face of common sense, that it can be defeated by a simple display of common sense, and that realism centers on the affirmation of the existence of the external world. Moore's analysis of idealism is far too simplistic to carry the day. He does not show even a minimal acquaintance with its main forms. He routinely uses the term "idealism" in different ways to refer to a wide variety of figures including Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, the post-Kantian German idealists, and the British idealists. Close examination would show that Moore conflates the views of Berkeley; the British idealists (only some of whom are Hegelian by any reasonable standard), including F. H. Bradley; and by inference Hegel—all of whom have different, incompatible views—with idealism in general. Idealism has never been centrally interested in assertions concerning the existence or nonexistence of the external world. Moore, who complains that idealism is committed to the latter doctrine, is unable to identify a single idealist philosopher or even a single idealist text in which this claim is advanced. His affirmation that idealism is contrary to common sense is ironic, since Berkeley argues that his position supports common sense against the improbable views of philosophers. Everything happens as if "common sense" had in the meantime come to mean something altogether different for Moore than it meant for Berkeley. If idealism in general does not urge the nonexistence of the external world, then an affirmation of its existence is insufficient to refute this doctrine. There is no idealism in general, only individual idealists who profess doctrines that may or may not overlap in significant ways but cannot be reduced to a single common position or doctrinal commitment. Thus, Kant, who claims to understand Plato better than he understood himself, rejects the latter's intuitive approach in favor of the supposed demonstration of claims to know. It is doubtful that Moore disposes of idealism as a philosophical doctrine or even of a significant form of idealism. His celebrated assertion, "Here is one hand . . . and here is another" does not run counter to any affirmation of any idealist in any text.13 It is, hence, insufficient to refute idealism either in whole or in part. For reasons Moore provides and that are widely accepted, since for Moore, analytic thinkers, with only very rare exceptions, tend to distrust idealism of all kinds. Exceptions who do not distrust Hegel include such figures as Sellars, Rorty, Brandom, McDowell, and a few others, who in turning to Hegel are also, though mainly unconsciously, turning to idealism. 14 Those who distrust idealism naturally tend to know little, and often very little, about it. Those who know little about

idealism are unable to judge the strength of Moore's arguments, unable to determine if they adequately support his critique of it. The outcome of philosophical battles rarely depends on the strength of argument. It more often turns on factors in the surrounding context. Whether Moore was correct about idealism is irrelevant to the impact of his critique in determining the course of the later analytic discussion in which no one, or almost no one—certainly no one committed to analytic philosophy—knew much more about the doctrine he rejected than he did. In part influenced by Moore's critique of idealism, the wholesale shift from idealism understood as incompatible with realism toward realism understood as incompatible with idealism continued throughout the entire twentieth century. This shift is only now slowing because it is tacitly being realized in the nascent analytic return to Hegel, a leading idealist, that idealism and realism are not incompatible but under certain conditions compatible. Realism is understood in a bewildering variety of different ways. It is common to speak of naive realism, causal realism, scientific realism, empirical realism, and antirealism. In pointing out the shift in the Englishlanguage debate from idealism to realism through the emergence of analytic philosophy, not much is being said beyond what adherents to analytic modes of thought understand as the utter incompatibility between realism and idealism. There is a basic distinction between ontological realism, which concerns claims about what is, and epistemological realism, which concerns claims about the cognitive object. Moore was primarily concerned throughout his career with a form of ontological realism, or with the doctrine that what we know does not in any way depend on our knowledge of it. Kant and many others, including recently Michael Dummett, are committed to epistemological realism, or the doctrine that what we know is real, which they understand in widely different ways. The differences between types of realism concern such basic questions as whether realism is independent of empiricism, and hence survives an attack on it. It also includes the difference between a view of realism as referring to a mind-independent external object that is knowable and known, or at least exists, and a mind-dependent external object. Thus, Kant's empirical realism refers to objects of experience and knowledge that depend for their existence on the knower. Kant's emphasis on "realism" as referring to objects not independent of but rather dependent on the knower is strongly influential for

later German idealism. The later German idealists routinely follow Kant's lead in avoiding any claim to know the mind-independent external world as it is. But Kant's view contrasts sharply with the more frequent understanding of realism as referring to what is independent of but can be known by the mind that emerges in early Greek philosophy and runs throughout the later tradition. Realism about knowledge of the external world has been especially influential in analytic philosophy. Hilary Putnam is arguably the most important analytic realist. His commitment to different forms of realism spans his early scientific realism with close links to physicalism, then a long period as an internal realist, and, more recently, his natural realism influenced by William James and McDowell. The stages of his development through various types of realism correlate closely with the spirit of the times, initially with the rampant scientism of the Vienna Circle he eventually came to reject, later with the kind of pluralism that emerged in the wake of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, and in recent years in a kind of Cartesian realism, counterposing the mind to the world, in such writers as Michael Devitt, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Bernard Williams,15 Robert Nozick, and Thomas Nagel. The nature of realism as it is often understood in the recent debate is usefully focused by Dummett. In eschewing a Kantian approach, Dummett favors whatfaute de mieux can be called Platonic realism. For Dummett, realism should be understood as an assertion about the kind of meaning to be assigned to certain statements; in short, as a version of the (Platonic) view that certain statements are objectively true or false in that they correctly refer (or fail to refer) to independent reality.16 According to Dummett, for whom the contrary to realism is phenomenalism, disputes about realism necessarily concern the validity of a criterion for the validity of deductive arguments. 17 This view is opposed by McDowell, who argues that it makes sense to believe that someone's understanding of a language might engage the world by way of conditions that can transcend anyone's ability to ascertain whether or not they obtain. 18

PHILOSOPHY AS PLATONISM The strong realism that dominates modern philosophy is not a modern invention. It is widely present in ancient philosophy. It is helpful for assessing the nature and prospects of modern realism to consider

its roots in the Greek tradition. It would be very useful to describe the many forms of realism in ancient Greek philosophy or to evaluate the realist component of ancient Greek philosophy but that is not my intention here. I intend to do no more than identify and provide a minimal description of a commitment to a realist form of knowledge that recurs in different ways in modern philosophy. The link between modern philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy which is instructive, is often neglected in the discussion. Realism is older than either modern philosophy or the problem of universals. The medieval controversy opposing proponents of realism, nominalism, and conceptualism grows out of and was preceded by the ancient Greek concern with realism. Greek philosophy is dominated by the problem of reality.19 Attention to the early Greek roots of realism suggests that it is a continuing theme throughout the Western philosophical tradition, that modern difficulties in making out realism have their beginnings in early Greek thought, and that these difficulties cannot be solved (or resolved) by returning to a suitably updated version of Greek philosophy Dummett's identification of realism with Platonism suggests a specific link between modern and ancient Greek philosophy. Moore, like many other figures, advances claims to know that he makes no attempt to justify or legitimate. Dummett differs from Moore, who understands realism ontologically, in taking an epistemological approach. Epistemological realism is a main component of what, in following Dummett's lead, I will call Platonism, as distinguished from Plato's own position, which cannot now be ascertained. None of the many changes in the modern discussion of knowledge is more important than the widespread progressive abandonment of the ancient link between epistemology and ontology. In Kant's wake, the claim to know what is as it is appears to be uncritical or dogmatic because it is unsupported by sufficient argument, hence suspect. Yet even this sea change, which is central to what we currently understand as knowledge, did not basically alter the steady, widespread, nearly obsessive commitment to the normative, naive, and undemonstrable Platonic conviction, which runs throughout the entire later tradition, that under proper conditions we in fact know mind-independent reality—in short, the world—not merely as it appears but as it is. Whitehead's famous description of Western philosophy as no more than a series of footnotes to Plato suggests that it is in fact Platonism. Metaphysical realism is embedded in Platonism as one of its main

components. There is not one but many different views of reality in ancient Greece. These include Heraclitus's claim that it may be different than our view of it, that it is a contradictory illusion as the Eleatics believe, that there is a colorless world of atoms and the void as Democritus holds, or again, as various ancient skeptics suggest, that we cannot know what it is like. 20 Contemporary forms of realism often consist of variations on the deep but naive Greek commitment to a mind-independent but supposedly cognizable (or uncognizable) real. In discussing Platonism, I have in mind not a particular position defended by a particular individual but rather an ideal position that may or may not be correctly attributable to Plato and that is not intended to describe any particular position. I do not claim that modern realism in all or indeed any of its forms is explicitly anticipated in ancient Greek thought. Yet a detailed interpretation of individual positions seems unnecessary in order to point to the widespread early Greek commitment to the Platonic realism, or the doctrine of a mind-independent reality with which the mind can (or cannot) be brought into contact and that is in this way knowable (or unknowable). Platonism, which is older than Plato, receives canonical form in the Republic, his most influential dialogue. Here, at the dawn of the Western philosophical tradition, in restating the Parmenidean idea that to know is to know reality as it is, Plato describes truth and knowledge in a way that, over the centuries, has continued to define Western philosophical conceptions. By Platonism I have in mind a series of six related doctrines: first, the ontological claim that reality exists, that there is a mind-independent world, or a way that the world is in itself, as distinguished from its appearance; second, the normative idea that to know is to know reality, or the real as it is; third, the constative claim that we can and, under the proper conditions, in fact do have such knowledge; fourth, the associated descriptive view that such knowledge is absolute, "irrelative," not in any way relative, hence not relative to a particular knower, set of knowers, or a given time or place or to a point of view, perspective, conceptual framework, or context; fifth, the claim that knowledge is beyond skepticism, hence beyond doubt of any kind, in a word anhypothetical; and sixth, the idea that, beyond the results of discussion, which is the normal way of dealing with forms or ideas, the real can be directly known through intuition at least by some individuals some of the time.

These six Platonic doctrines enjoy disparate fortunes in the later discussion. Platonic realism is astonishingly—astonishingly since it is an item of belief for which no argument has ever been provided—as alive today as it was in Plato's time. All six Platonic doctrines continue, in different ways, to influence the discussion. With the exception of the third doctrine concerning a grasp of the mind-independent world as it is, the others are now mainly represented in weak, or at least weaker than original, form. Only the third doctrine is still widely defended in anything close to original Platonic form, for instance in recent discussions of scientific realism. The physicist Sheldon Glashow expresses a view currently widespread among scientists, philosophers of science, and selected philosophers in his claim there are "eternal, objective, ahistorical, socially neutral, external and universal truths, and that the assemblage of these truths is what we call physical science." 21

PARMENIDES, PLATO, AND PLATONIC REALISM Platonism can be understood in either wide or narrow senses. Understood broadly as including the notorious theory of ideas, which is often attributed to Plato but which we do not know if he endorsed, Platonism is currently favored by almost no one. Understood narrowly as the realist claim that to know is to know the real as it is, it remains extremely influential. Platonic realism, which is older than Plato, is present in some interpretations as early as Parmenides, who seems to be philosophically first in a number of ways. Standard treatments of his work often look away from its epistemological implications. 22 Yet Parmenides is apparently the first writer in ancient Greece concerned with knowledge in a recognizably modern sense—perhaps even the first to provide a sustained philosophical argument, but he is an astonishingly modern thinker. He seems also to be the first to focus attention on the nature of (real) being, the central question of Greek metaphysics; for instance, in references to eon as what is sometimes construed as the subject of speculative predication. 23 He identifies knowledge as knowing the mind-independent world, which he typically studies in the "Way of Truth" through a kind of logical dialectic permitting deductions about being without any appeal to the senses or to appearance. 24 We recall that the "Way of Truth" begins with the striking claim that "that which is, is, and cannot not be," which stakes

out the theme of knowing as knowing the real. This claim is routinely construed as asserting realistic premises underlying the "Way of Truth" that the real must be that that can be thought and known, and that these things are necessarily one. 25 For Parmenides, who denies change as unreal, to know is to know what is as it is. In his account, the possibility of knowledge rests on the supposed adequate relation between the knower and the known, epistemology and cosmology. His distinction between the way of truth as curved and the way of illusion as straight suggests that the very possibility of truth and knowledge rests on a relation between epistemology and cosmology, between the knower and the knowable. His conviction that reason is curved, since reality is like "a rounded sphere," 26 is later restated in Plato's Timaeus as the view that the sphere is the most perfect figure (33 B-C), that the world is spherical, and that the soul comes to know through circular motion (37 A-C). In this way, Parmenides apparently anticipates the familiar "Kantian" insight that cognition must "correspond" to its cognitive object. In drawing attention to the link between thought and being, Parmenides raises, apparently for the first time in the Western philosophical tradition, some two millenia before Kant, the recognizably Kantian question of the relation of reason to its cognitive object. He is sometimes read as suggesting the epistemological thesis that what can be said and thought is and that what is is knowable, since thought and being are the same, or identical. 27 It is certainly no accident that Hegel, who later develops the philosophy of identity, sees in this claim Parmenides's main insight. 28 Parmenides's reasoning seems to be that what is not can neither be known nor said, that what can be said and thought must be, that the same thing can be thought and can be, and that to be and to be thought are the same, or identical. 29 In seeming to identify thought and being at the dawn of the Western philosophical tradition, Parmenides is sometimes read as anticipating the conception of identity that follows from Kant's critical philosophy and that was later developed by post-Kantian idealists. Platonism as it has come down to us is obviously already beginning to emerge in Parmenides. Platonism bears an uncertain relation to Plato's position. Plato presents apparently incompatible views of knowledge in his dialogues. The Republic advances a conception of philosophy as grounding its own and all other attempts to know. The Parmenides attacks the theory of ideas, which is routinely taken as

Plato's own distinctive contribution. The Theaetetus presents an account of what is now often called justified true belief, which is remarkably close to themes in the current discussion. The "Seventh Letter," whose authenticity is uncertain, suggests that the deepest insights into reality cannot be captured in language. Since we cannot identify Plato's position, we do not know how it relates to Platonism. Plato describes what I call Platonism in such early Socratic dialogues, then in middle dialogues such as the Meno and the Phaedo; in such mature dialogues as the Sophist, the Theaetetus, the Parmenides; and above all in the Republic. In texts such as the Phaedo, the Timaeus, and the Republic, he follows the Parmenidean view of immutable eternal being as the object of knowledge. 30 By enfranchising non-being in the Sophist, he replaces Parmenides's dualism of truth and illusion, being and non-being, with a triple distinction between knowledge, opinion (or belief), and ignorance. 31 In the Republic, in part following Parmenides, Plato advances the view that what is is knowable, that what is not is not knowable, 32 and that knowledge is directed to what is. Knowledge and opinion concern different objects. 33 Plato suggests that on grounds of nature and nurture, some of us—call them men of gold—can directly intuit independent reality. For a Platonist, to know is to know absolutely in a way beyond skepticism or time and place. In the Republic, Plato presents the familiar dualistic view of knowledge that is based on the distinction between objects of thought and of experience. Knowledge in the full sense requires direct apprehension of the real, understood as the cognitive object as well as the cause of knowledge and truth (508E). Science and mathematics feature a type of knowledge (dianoia) dependent on hypotheses, which is, roughly, reasoning on the basis of first principles to a conclusion. Dialectic, the highest specifically philosophical type of knowledge (noesis), dispenses with hypotheses through direct, intuitive apprehension of reality.34 To know is to know in a way beyond doubt of any kind. Such knowledge is akin to, as Plato later suggests in a pair of visual metaphors in the "Seventh Letter," a self-sustaining flame and to a blaze of light. 35 The Greek word episteme, from which we derive "epistemology," comes from the Greek verb epistasthai, meaning capable of (doing something). This is very different from our present theoretical understanding of knowledge. Aristotle seems to be the first, or at least the first thinker of the first rank, to draw a distinction between discursive

thought and the form of rational discourse known as a demonstration. 36 But like the other Greek thinkers, other than through the appeal to the resources of dialectical argument, he did not believe that it was necessary to demonstrate the existence of the real, to which his own sense-based epistemology, as suggested in the slogan nihil est in intellectu prius quod nonfuerit in sensu, is committed.

PLATONIC REALISM, ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE, AND SKEPTICISM Platonic realism is closely related to claims for absolute knowledge and to the defeat of skepticism. As understood here, the term "absolute" means "unlimited," "not relative" or even, as Kant suggests, "valid without restriction." 37 Absolute knowledge, which has only the name in common with Hegel's view of absolute knowing, 38 is not relative, hence not constrained or limited in any way, such as with respect to time, place, point of view, perspective, or conceptual framework. Relative knowledge is constrained or limited in some way and hence valid only within the limits of various restrictions. It has been widely believed, since early in Western philosophy that there are degrees of knowledge but that "to know" in the full sense means "to know absolutely," or in an unrestricted sense. Like the term "absolute," which by definition excludes what is relative, absolute knowledge by definition excludes relative knowledge. By virtue of its "absolute," supposedly irrelative, hence unrevisable, character, a claim for knowledge is often understood to be definitively proven or demonstrated, fixed or final, hence certain and not practically or even theoretically open to revision, as indefeasible. A claim for relative knowledge is never certain, always tentative, never final, always open to revision, never indefeasible. Empirical assertions are now usually regarded as relative, as defeasible, as possibly wrong, as always at least in principle corrigible. A claim that, say the cat is on the mat can always be mistaken on empirical grounds. Inductive claims, which depend on future experience, can always be disconfirmed at a later date through a counterexample. The fact that all crows so far observed have been black says nothing about the results of future observations. Yet some writers regard at least certain empirical claims as unrevisably correct. According to Locke, simple ideas are necessarily true: hence, they cannot be false with respect to external things.39

Absolute claims to know are typically regarded as defeating skepticism, even as the only way to do so. In some of his moods, Plato seems to be arguing for, or at least describing, an absolute conception of knowledge. The absolute nature of the Platonic conception of knowledge, a view that is routinely attributed to Plato, is often overlooked. Guthrie's description of Platonism is typical: "The metaphysical concept of immutable being and the epistemological contention that knowledge is only explicable as a contact of the mind with an actual, stable and non-sensible object of knowledge are cornerstones of Platonism." 4 0 This description overlooks the most important aspect of Platonism: to know is to know the real absolutely; that is, to surpass appearance of any kind to know reality as it is. Absolute claims to know, or claims to know absolutely, are typically regarded as self-confirming, in principle indubitable, able to defeat doubt of even the most rigorous kind, immune to skepticism, and so on. Aristotle holds that the principle of noncontradiction cannot be denied. Descartes believes that the existence of the cogito, or self-consciousness, cannot be denied, hence is necessarily true. Descartes, who is often thought of as the first modern philosopher, is writing in the wake of Montaigne. The latter, who strongly influences Descartes, offers the first full modern statement of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Montaigne revives the ancient skeptical diallelus, or wheel argument, in maintaining that all claims to know, whether on behalf of the senses or of reason, are necessarily circular. 41 His examination of the question of what I can know {que sais-je?) from the perspective of the subject leads to the familiar Pyrrhonian conclusion that I can know nothing at all. Descartes, who starts from the same perspective as Montaigne, extends ancient skepticism in questioning the presupposed, but undemonstrated, existence of the real. He draws a diametrically opposite conclusion in arguing for apodictic claims to know that are allegedly sufficient to defeat even the most radical form of Pyrrhonian skepticism in Montaigne and others. 42 After Descartes, skepticism is mainly disregarded until the time of Hume, and after Hume then again largely disregarded. Although skepticism continues to be discussed, and some important philosophers, such as Hegel, are conversant with and concerned to answer skepticism, 43 the main philosophical figures tend not to see it as a serious cognitive concern. Neither Kant, who never seriously considers skepticism, nor Husserl, for whom it is the unavoidable consequence of refusing a transcendental approach, considers skepticism directly.

Kant merely suggests that to change anything in the critical philosophy would create contradictions in human reason. 44 In part following Kant, Husserl rejects any form of philosophical naturalism in claiming a quasi-Cartesian, apodictic, unrevisable status for transcendental phenomenology. 45 Philosophers of very different persuasions share a broadly Platonic commitment to knowing in an absolute sense. 46 In its original formulation, Platonic realism depends on the relation between thought and being, epistemology and cosmology. When the naive Greek cosmology was abandoned at the beginning of modern philosophy, Platonic realism was reformulated but not given up. Divested of its ontological underpinnings, Platonic realism dominates the entire later epistemological discussion. It still persists as the main philosophical (and arguably scientific) exemplar of what it means to know. In the writings of Descartes, Locke, Kant, Frege, Russell, the early Wittgenstein, Husserl, Gadamer, 47 Chisholm, Husserl, Heidegger, Quine, Sellars, Putnam, Davidson, Nozick, T. Nagel, and many others, theories of knowledge from Descartes to the present typically feature claims to know what is as it is while silently dropping any reference to direct knowledge of the unchanging real central to Greek philosophy after Parmenides. This does not happen in the Greek tradition, which consists of a series of variations on the Platonic claim to know the real. Aristotle develops, but also transforms, the Platonic approach to knowledge through direct intuition of the real. 48 He collapses the familiar Platonic distinction between reality and appearance by putting the forms or essences, understood as the objects of knowledge, into things, while rejecting the questionable Platonic ontology in favor of an equally questionable, but vastly more influential, ontology of his own. For Aristotle, who introduces a distinction between between pure science and practical science, the former, which is exact, concerns truth about what is, and the latter, which is inexact, concerns action. Pure science is devoted to first principles and basic reasons, or universals, 49 the most intelligible matters, which are not the objects of the senses. Aristotelian pure science is arguably concerned in the final analysis with a single basic question: what does it mean to be a being (to ti hen einai?).50 His commitment to absolute knowledge is evident in his denial of infinite regress, in his view of primary being as enduring and immutable, in his conception of the heavens as uncreated and eter-

nal, 51 and so on. There must be being of this kind, since we have opinions (endoxa) 52 and talk about it. 53 It is impossible to be mistaken about the most basic principle of being, the law of noncontradiction, which is necessary in order to understand anything whatsoever. 54 In comparison to classical Greek philosophy, later discussion continues to insist on absolute, unrestricted claims to know. But it loosens the link between cognition and ontology And after Descartes it links claims for truth and knowledge to the defeat of hyperbolic skepticism which, for the first time, calls into doubt the existence of the real, which the Greeks merely assumed. 55 Yet modern skepticism, which questions even the real, agrees with ancient skepticism and the main philosophical approaches to epistemology in basing claims for truth and knowledge on a grasp of reality. As in Greek philosophy, the modern period features an ongoing debate through the centuries between those who assert and those who deny the traditional Platonic idea of knowledge of the real. This changes around the time of Kant in two main ways. One is the emergence of weaker, anthropological, culturally based, historically relative views of knowledge in W. von Humboldt, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Gadamer, and other writers. The other is the rise of classical American pragmatism. Peirce, and those influenced by him, including James and Dewey, share his anti-Cartesian concern to formulate a nonfoundationalist view of knowledge which, with the possible exception of James in his radical empiricist phase, 56 gives up familiar claims to know the mind-independent real as it is. Platonic realism, according to which knowledge surpasses mere hypothesis through a grasp of the real, is independent of the naive Greek ontology After Greek ontology was abandoned through the emergence of modern philosophy, attention turned to other matters. Over hundreds of years it was not considered an important epistemological theme. In our day, Greek ontology has again come under attack in the rejection of "presence" by Heidegger, Derrida, and their students. Since this attack applies specifically to ontology, it is is in principle neutral with respect to knowledge, hence unrelated to epistemological skepticism. James, for instance, in some of his moods denies that we ever know what he calls the really real in holding that we "make" truth, so to speak. It is entirely possible to deny "presence," hence to deny Greek ontology as it was originally formulated, while maintaining a weaker, non-Platonic view of knowledge, say one in which we

never know the real since even what we mean by "reality" is no more than the provisional result of an open-ended series of negotiations. 57 There is only a small step from the view that knowledge worthy of the name is absolute to the associated idea that science is a privileged source of absolute knowledge. Newton depends on absolute space and absolute time to distinguish between real and merely apparent motion. Kant defends Newtonian mechanics, the science of his day, in presupposing that scientific laws, like mathematics, are a priori, hence beyond experience. 58 Interpretations of scientific knowledge as absolute, hence independent of experience, conflict with the still-fashionable fallibilist view of science as experientially falsifiable that prevails at least since Galileo. To take a famous example, had it turned out that light did not change in the neighborhood of a large gravitational mass, the general theory of relativity would have been falsified on empirical grounds, grounds that an a priori conception of science apparently excludes. Even in Greek times, claims for truth and knowledge about the real depended on the defeat of skepticism. Skepticism, which is often traced back to Socrates, was formulated as a philosophical methodology only after Plato. When skepticism begins depends on what one thinks it is. Pre-Socratic figures such as Heraclitus and, in response to him, Cratylus, Socrates's contemporary, are sometimes understood as skeptics. Others include Pyrrho (by widespread agreement the first great skeptic), Gorgias, or even Protagoras. In noting the relation of Platonism to what is now called skepticism, there is no intention to suggest that Plato intends to counter a later doctrine, although he clearly means to counter skepticism as it was understood in his time. In the Republic, a case for knowledge beyond skepticism is advanced in two main ways. On the one hand, there is the famous but implausible claim literally to "see" reality, which, if anyone could actually do so, would successfully refute objections based on the mere relativity of perception. Yet no one, including Plato, has ever proposed a plausible account of what it means to intuit metaphysical reality directly On the other hand, it is suggested that if philosophers needed to review their conclusions or correct their theories, in short to examine the relation of epistemological theory to epistemological practice, it would lead to mere lawlessness. 59 Yet since debate about knowledge has been under way for more than two and half thousand years, on inductive grounds there seems no reason to hope it will ever surpass the supposed lawlessness of a philosophical discussion entirely lacking a decision procedure, hence without any real prospect of closure through rational debate.

PLATONIC REALISM, ONTOLOGY, AND MODERN THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE In its original form, Platonic realism presupposes a distinction between appearances, which are the stuff of ordinary experience, and their causes. Causes are at least in principle knowable and in fact known intuitively by a select philosophical group. Reality on this model is fixed, unchanging, and knowable as it is. The objective character of a knowable reality underlies and makes possible objective claims to know. Modern philosophy has turned away from Platonic "objectivism," or "the basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness or Tightness." 60 Yet it continues to feature the idea that to know is to know the way the world is. In this narrow sense, Platonic realism is spread astonishingly widely throughout the intellectual landscape. A form of Platonism is featured in certain modern poets. According to Charles Baudelaire, we grasp the essentially transitory through the permanence in the flux.61 He presupposes a permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework that we know when we know through direct intuition providing access to the unchanging reality that underlies and makes possible all change. In the absence of anything approaching the naive Greek view of ontology, recent debate between Platonists and their critics tends to focus squarely on epistemology as if it were the only issue. 62 With the important exception of pragmatism and modern science, which are both broadly fallibilist, hence subject to correction on empirical grounds, the modern debate on knowledge, perhaps even the analytic debate throughout the twentieth century, mainly consists of a series of variations on Platonic themes. Though there are many differences, the current debate on knowledge remains astonishingly close to Platonism in several ways. Few current writers deny the concept of a mind-independent real that under appropriate conditions can and is known as it is. It follows that the central epistemological thesis in Platonism is still widely accepted as a central thesis in contemporary epistemology. This basic similarity persists despite the many important differences between ancient and modern epistemological perspectives. In general terms, the modern epistemological debate diverges from classical Platonism in four main ways. To begin with, the classical

Greek philosophical claim to intuit independent reality is only rarely defended in modern times, for instance by Spinoza, Reid, and Moore. A quadripartite distinction is sometimes made between intuition understood as a hunch; then as a source of immediate, hence unconscious, knowledge; further as yielding immediate knowledge of a concept; and finally as offering nonpropositional knowledge, for instance in the form of sensory intuition favored by Kant. 63 Cognitive intuition, as in Kant's famous intuitive claim that 7 + 5 = 12, is understood as noninferential, as not inferred from other propositions, and as not based on perception, memory, or introspection. Intuitionism has lost its hold on the modern imagination because of a change in the conception of objective knowledge. Galileo insists on the need to proceed step by step from inference to inference while denying cognitive intuition, which he attributes only to God. 6 4 Philosophers from Kant to Russell reject claims for intuitive knowledge, either by denying cognitive intuition or by denying that it yields knowledge in the full sense. As William James notes, Plato and others, including religious mystics, who claim direct experience (e.g., God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and so on) typically provide metaphorical accounts of how they acquire knowledge. 65 There neither are nor could be any "authenticated" instances of such experience. As now understood, claims to know are in principle intersubjective, hence public. Direct intuition, which is private, is not even potentially public. In a word, anything like the intuitive Platonic approach to knowledge fails the current standard of intersubjective verifiability. Second, there is the post-Kantian tendency to make cognitive claims without more than tacit recourse to ontology Greek philosophers and their modern successors through Kant typically regard claims to know as dependent on assumptions about reality. Kant's Copernican turn rules out assumptions about an independent but unknowable world situated "outside" of experience. After Kant, claims that in Strawson's felicitous phrase exceed the bounds of sense, hence surpass the limits of experience, are no longer meaningful. Contemporary realists, who continue to insist on knowledge of the external world, are properly hesitant in making ontological assumptions about what Putnam calls "the furniture of the universe." 6 6 Third, the naive Greek assumption that cognitive claims are somehow self-legitimating, for instance through direct intuition of the object, also seems dated. With some exceptions, arguably most prominently the Cartesian cogito, few modern observers think that claims to

know are either self-demonstrating or permanently insulated from the possibility of doubt. The modern inability to prevent doubt about cognitive claims from arising is reflected in the steadfast opposition between confident claims for absolute knowledge, knowledge that is unshakeable by any means, and the equally confident skeptical claims that no knowledge is possible at all. Fourth, in the absence of an underlying ontology as early as Kant the modern problem of knowledge was transformed into variations on the relation between the knower and the known, subjectivity and objectivity, subject and object, freedom and necessity, representation and the represented, and so on. This relation only becomes a problem when what is to be known is not, or (according to Kant) cannot possibly be, given in experience. Probably no one now thinks there is privileged access to the real as it is. Since epistemology can no longer be described (in MerleauPonty's phrase) as seeing the invisible, the problem of knowledge no longer turns on showing how some exceptional individuals know reality. Under Descartes' influence, the epistemological problem has been reformulated as the task of demonstrating that claims to know are not distorted by a variety of factors, whose most extreme example is the purely theoretical, counterfactual Cartesian device of the evil genius. In practice, this aspect of the debate divides into three main tasks. One, that concerns justified inference from the contents of the mind to the independent external world, engages the attention of Descartes and his successors. A second is the problem of veridical perception as opposed to illusions and delusions, a problem that is a consistent concern for Descartes as well as for empiricists of all kinds. A third is the problem of the determination of the most general conditions of knowledge, in Kant's extreme view the conditions of knowledge whatsoever; in effect a modern, generalized form of the Aristotelian claim that the law of the excluded middle must be respected in all claims to know. Each of these approaches results from the modern transformation of the traditional epistemological problem.

PLATONIC REALISM AFTER PLATO Despite intervening changes in the philosophical debate on knowledge, the general commitment to Platonic realism is arguably as strong now as it was in ancient Greece. Plato was concerned with a duality between

appearance, specifically including the empirical world, and reality as the object of mind. In modern philosophy, the ancient Greek dualism between truth and illusion, or reality and appearance, is replaced by a new dualism between the cognitive subject and the mind-independent external world. The modern version of Platonic realism is widely represented in the writings of modern philosophers and working scientists committed to a grasp of the mind-independent external world as it is. Long after Kant, Platonism survives in our time in the persistent, stubborn, dogmatic, indemonstrable but widespread commitment by philosophers, philosophers of science, and scientists alike, distantly following the Cartesian form of metaphysical realism, to claims to know the mindindependent external world as it is in all its many forms. Obviously all realisms are not the same. There are important differences between, say, naive, direct realism, according to which ordinary claims to know pick out features of the external world, and so-called scientific realism, which is incompatible with ordinary experience. Kant distinguishes between the noumenon, or thing-in-itself, the way things can without contradiction be thought but not given in experience, hence cannot be known, and empirical realism, or what can be given in experience and is in fact known. Sellars, who distinguishes between the folk view and the scientific view, denies that the former is in touch with reality.67 Kant, the rationalists, and the empiricists are all metaphysical realists in different ways, all committed to the idea that under certain specifiable conditions the mind can get in touch with mind-independent reality; in short, that we can and in fact do know the world as it is. Yet realists differ about whether what we can claim to know is the mind-independent world as it is. There is no significant difference between the Cartesian claim that some ideas about the world can be known to be true beyond the possibility of doubt, classical versions of the British empiricist view that the mind "mirrors" independent reality in Francis Bacon or grasps simple ideas which are necessarily true in Locke, and the "official" Kantian concern to know the relation of representations to mind-independent objects. Yet Kant, who was concerned with grasping the relation of representations to objects, argues strongly against any claim to know the way the world is as it is. In limiting knowledge to what can be given in experience, Kant transforms but does not terminate the debate on knowledge. It is a fre-

quent but "deep" mistake to hold that epistemology ends in Kant. Kant's immediate successors generally believed that his Copernican turn was correct but incomplete—in Habermas's useful phrase, an unfinished project. The post-Kantian German idealist movement is devoted to carrying further and to completing Kant's Copernican turn according to the spirit of the critical philosophy. The epistemological debate, which changes after Kant, just as clearly continues in different ways in Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche; in the return to Kant; in the rise of analytic philosophy; in the emergence of American pragmatism; in the early form of Husserlian phenomenology; and so on. Phenomenology and pragmatism continue the lengthy, even obsessive Western philosophical concern with the problem of knowledge. Husserl makes claims to apodictic seeing of essences. Peirce was initially concerned with what would now be called a fallibilist approach to the philosophy of science. But in our time, the debate on knowledge has mainly occurred in analytic philosophy which, with some exceptions, such as Rorty, an antirealist, is strongly committed to making good on various forms of the strong Platonic claim to know reality. We can reconstruct this debate in terms of two central ideas: the affirmation, following Moore and many others, of the existence of the mind-independent external world, and various forms of the claim to know the way the world is, mainly through analyses of sensation and perception. 68 The simplest characterization of analytic philosophy as it emerged in the efforts of Moore and Russell is that it rejects the supposed idealist denial of the existence of the external world. In different ways, Moore and Russell, then later analytic thinkers such as Davidson, and more recently Brandom 69 and McDowell are all concerned to assert that we possess what Russell calls knowledge of the external world. 70 The existence of mind-independent reality is not a problem in Greek philosophy, where those who assert and those who deny claims for truth and knowledge share an uncritical commitment to the undemonstrated and indemonstrable real, to what today would be called mind-independent reality. It only becomes problematic when, in radicalizing epistemological doubt, Descartes questions the existence of the real. 71 Kant, who stresses his grasp of Plato, criticizes "bad" idealists such as Descartes and Berkeley who supposedly deny the existence of the external world. Kant's refutation of his idealist predecessors arguably rests on tendentious readings of both positions.

Descartes does not deny the existence of the external world, which he claims to know through clear and distinct ideas. Berkeley denies no more than the philosophical view of the world, which he finds unpersuasive and to which he prefers what he depicts as the commonsense view as it exists in the mind. Moore, who is bothered by Kant's idealism, finds his refutation of idealism to be unconvincing. In maintaining obscurely that objects of which I am aware are in all cases what they are when we are not aware of them, he complains that Berkeley mistakenly reduces objects to my sensations and ideas and that Kant wrongly treats objects as mere representations. 72 Moore's concern to demonstrate the reality of the external world suggests that he finds Kant's proof insufficient. Not all analytic writers, many of whom take the existence of the mind-independent external world on epistemological faith, share Moore's concern with this theme. The later Wittgenstein and the early Carnap believe that the problem of the existence of the external world is merely a pseudoproblem. The analytic attack on idealism, which mobilized the energies of the analytic community over decades, led to a turn away from idealism in general, which begins in Frege's criticism of Husserl's psychologism and which continues unabated, with no visible sign of diminishing, to this day. The analytic rejection of idealism has been recently supplemented by a gradual, sporadic return to Hegel in such analytic thinkers as Sellars, whose Hegelian interlude occurred in the midst of a steady commitment to Kant, 73 Rorty,74 McDowell, 75 and Brandom. 7 6 Though the nature of Hegel's idealism is a question for specialized discussion, I am not aware of anyone who denies that his position is idealist. Hence, the current selective analytic return to Hegel is obviously ironic, since the attack on Hegel and idealism in general belongs to the deepest impulses of analytic philosophy. Different reactions to this turn of events are possible. For Rorty, the division between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy that led to the rise of the former has now been overcome. The prospect of a radiant philosophical future in which analytic philosophy will actually become Hegelian is suggested in Rorty's overly enthusiastic, wildly mistaken claim that through their "proto" Hegelianism, Sellars and Brandom overcome the split between analytic and continental philosophy. 77 The incipient analytic return to Hegel is clearly problematic. It depends, to begin with, on an unclear idea of "idealism," which has no

nonnormative meaning. It further presupposes without argument that Kant fails to refute supposed "bad" idealist denials of the external world. It is false to infer that idealism as such denies the existence of the external world; even some analytic thinkers are starting to acknowledge this. In criticizing Sellars, McDowell has recently pointed to Hegel's commitment to external constraints. 78 Analytic insistence on the existence of the external world is often combined with a commitment to different forms of realism. Moore's commonsensism relies on a type of naive realism anticipated in Reid. Russell, a more complex figure, retains a realist streak in his transition from naive realism to sense-data, or knowledge by acquaintance as opposed to knowledge by description, which was later followed by logical atomism (also known as logical empiricism). Wittgenstein's early Tractarian theory notoriously rests on a one-to-one relation between atomic propositions and atomic facts. A variant of this view, influenced, but opposed, by Wittgenstein, was proposed in the Vienna Circle by Schlick and Carnap in order to link the empirical world and natural science through so-called protocols. I will return to this issue below. The persistent analytic critique of classical empiricism, including its neoanalytic form in Moore, by Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, and others is often linked to an associated commitment to various successor forms of Platonic realism, or claims to get it right about the mind-independent external world. Variations on this theme are widely featured in Devitt, T. Nagel, Bernard Williams, Davidson, Putnam, and many others. Devitt, who represents Australian realism in an American setting, straightforwardly but implausibly claims that a true theory is one that gets it right about independently existing entities. 79 Nagel insists that a view becomes more objective as subjectivity—that is, the individual subject is somehow (it is never made clear how) "subtracted" from it to reveal reality independent of the self. 80 Williams contends that we depict independent reality and that science in fact succeeds in doing so. 81 In his semantic but nonepistemic coherence theory of truth, Davidson presupposes that cognitive claims stated in natural language correspond to the world. 82 Putnam is a more complex, perhaps more interesting figure who has consistently espoused a series of different forms of realism throughout his various incarnations. His early causal realist view (before 1981), what he later refers to as external realism, later gave way under

Quine's influence to so-called internal realism, roughly the idea that we cannot choose between different possible interpretations of the same independent real. In internal realism, which Putnam understands as Kantianism, knowledge claims manifest different interpretations of the same independent real, 83 as distinguished from a direct grasp of the way things are. Putnam has in the meantime given up sense-data for the direct experience of the external world as selected in veridical perception. 84 He currently favors natural realism, his new name for direct realism. 85 Analytic writers, who believe that cognition implies realism as its condition, often turn to science, in extreme cases even to scientism, which is celebrated by Sellars but denounced by Putnam. 86 Scientific realism can be formulated in sophisticated ways that avoid the difficult claim to get it right about the world in favor of viewing external reality as an empirical constraint. Richard Boyd suggests that scientific realism should be understood as submitting to the external world in independence of our conceptual frameworks. 87 But when scientific realism is reduced to the minimalist but defensible claim that there are empirical constraints on our knowledge claims, when it avoids the controversial idea of getting it right about the world, one wonders whether one is still dealing with Platonic realism in any recognizable sense. Working scientists, who are often unwilling to limit their claims to mere empirical constraints on knowledge, like to suggest that we know the mind-independent independent world. Physicist Stephen Weinberg criticizes Kuhn's view of science as irrational. According to Weinberg, unless we are getting closer and closer to a grasp of the way things are in independence of us, science would turn out to be an irrational activity. 88 Although science clearly progresses in solving its puzzles, it does not follow, as Kuhn contends, that we do in fact know that later theories are closer to the way the world is. 89 The struggle between realists and antirealists, which currently pits Rorty, the self-professed antirealist, against the traditionally realist bent of mainstream analytic philosophy, recurs in a different form in contemporary science, particularly quantum mechanics. The core dispute between the standard Copenhagen interpretation, which is antirealist, and the different realist views of quantum mechanics features still another version of the argument between anti-Platonists and Platonists.

Any discussion of realism in quantum mechanics should note that the term has different meanings in prequantum, or traditional, physics as concerns objective, or observer-independent, physical "reality" and in quantum physics. In quantum mechanics, as in Greek philosophy, the problem is not whether there is some kind of subjacent reality behind the phenomena but only whether and under what conditions it can be "known," or, more precisely, known as it is. Niels Bohr, for instance, who favors an antirealist interpretation, takes a quasi-Kantian line according to which there is a reality that we cannot know. In quantum mechanics, the alternative seems to be some kind of pragmatic instrumentalism in which theory is regarded as merely an instrument for making predictions, as in van Fraassen's constructive empiricism, 90 or a version of realism in which explanation is keyed to interaction with a real, independent external world. In response to Bohr, in the course of an ongoing debate, Einstein published a classic paper in the 1930s on the measurement issue, 91 which Bohr then answered. 92 This controversy, which has never been resolved, is still simmering. 93 The hidden-variables theory is a form of realist interpretation that was developed by Bohm. 9 4 More recently, David Deutsch has elaborated the so-called many-worlds approach originally proposed by Hugh Everett. 95 NOTES 1. J. H. Stirling, The Secret of Hegel (London: Longman, Roberts and Green, 1865).

2. Otto Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen: Eine kritische Abhandlung, edited

by Bruno Bauch (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1912). For discussion of neo-

Kantianism, see Thomas E. Willey, Back to Kant: The Revival of Kantianism in German Social and Historical Thought, 1860-1914 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978).

3. See Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen. 4. See J. Pucelle, L'idealisme en Angleterre de Coleridge a Bradley (Neuchatel:

La Baconniere, 1955). For a more elementary discussion, see also Peter Robbins, The British Hegelians, 1875-1925 (New York: Garland, 1982). 5. See G. E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," Mind, New Series, 12, no. 48 (October 1903): 433-53. 6. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 274-B 280, pp. 326-29.

7. See "The Refutation of Idealism," in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (1922; reprint, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 1. Bradley makes a similar claim. See F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 552. 8. See Moore, Philosophical Studies, 5. He also says that he intends to refute idealism in the form it was recently stated by A. E. Taylor, the great Plato scholar. "My paper will at least refute Mr. Taylor's idealism, if it refutes anything at all: for I shall undertake to show that what makes a thing real cannot be its presence as an inseparable aspect of a sentient experience" (8). 9. See Moore, Philosophical Studies, 24. 10. See Moore, Philosophical Studies, 19, 22. 11. See Moore, Philosophical Studies, 27. 12. Kant's critical philosophy combines transcendental idealism with empirical realism, which would not be possible if idealism and realism were incompatible. 13. "Proof of an External World," in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 144. 14. For discussion, see Tom Rockmore, "Analytic Philosophy and the Hegelian Turn," Review of Metaphysics 55 (December 2001): 339-70. 15. According to Williams, natural science tells us about the world as it is. "In a scientific enterprise there should ideally be convergence on an answer, where the best explanation of the convergence involves the idea that the answer represents how things are." Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 136. 16. "Realism I characterize as the belief that statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us." "Realism," in Michael Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 146. 17. See Dummett, "Realism," 164-65. 18. See John McDowell, Meaning, Knowledge and Reality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), esp. Part III: "Realism and Anti-Realism," 314-68. 19. See John Burnet, Greek Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1928), Part I: "Thales to Plato," 11. 20. For discussion, see many different views of reality in ancient Greece, including Heraclitus's claim that it may be different than our view of it, that it is contradictory illusion as the Eleatics believe, that there is a colorless world of atoms and the void as Democritus holds, or, as various skeptics suggest, that we cannot know what it is like. See Myles Burnyeat, "Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed," The Philosophical Review XCI, no. 1 (January 1982): 18-19. This very useful article provides one of the infrequent general treatments of realism in ancient Greek philosophy.

21. Sheldon Glashow, "The Death of Science?," in The End of Science? Attack and Defense, edited by Richard J. Elvee (Lanham: University Press of America, 1992), 28. 22. Mourelatos, for example, does not discuss in any depth fr. B 3, B 6.1 although he does comment in more detail B 8.34-38, all passages that are often cited as the basis of a so-called idealist reading of Parmenides. See A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). 23. For discussion, see Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides, 74-75, 93. 24. See G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 266. 25. See F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957), 33-35. 26. See Parmenides, fr. 8, in John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (Cleveland: Meridian, 1961), 176. 27. This way of reading Parmenides is controversial. For a recent review of the theme, which argues that Parmenides did not anticipate modern idealism, see Rose Cherubin, "Legein, Noein, and To Eon in Parmenides," Ancient Philosophy 21 (2001): 2 7 7 - 3 0 1 28. See G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 18, Werke in zwanzig Bdnden, edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Rinus Michel (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971), 289-90. 29. For the relevant passages and their interpretation, see John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1962), 173-74. The epistemological import of these passages is often not noticed. See, for example, Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 269-77. 30. See, for example, Phaedo, 78d; Timaeus, 27d; Republic, 477b; and Republic, 508d. 31. See Sophist, 241 d. 32. See Republic, V:477A 33. See Republic, V:478B. This discussion corresponds with the further discussion in Sophist 237B-264B. 34. See Republic, 510B, 533B-C. 35. See "Seventh Letter," 341C-D. 36. See Mary Tiles and Jim Tiles, An Introduction to Historical Epistemology: The Authority of Knowledge (Cambridge: Blackwells, 1993), 11-12. 37. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 382, p. 401. 38. Hegel is unconcerned with indefeasible cognitive claims. See Tom Rockmore, Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 179-94. 39. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, collated and annotated by Alexander Campbell Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959), vol. I, bk. 2, chapter 16, p. 521.

40. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (London: Cambridge University Press,) 11:39. 41. See "An Apology of Raymond Sebond," in Michel de Montaigne, The Selected Essays of Montaigne, edited and with an introduction by Lester G. Crocker (New York: Pocket Books, 1959), 228. 42. See "Michel de Montaigne and the 'Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens/" in Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 42-65. 43. For Hegel's grasp of skepticism, see Klaus Vieweg, Philosophie des Remis. Der junge Hegel und das 'Gespenst des Skeptizismus' (Munich: Fink Verlag, 1999). 44. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxxviii-xxxix, pp. 120-21. 45. There is a distinction between naturalizing and naturalism. For discussion of the link between a naturalizing form of Husserlian phenomenology and cognitive science, see Naturalizing Epistemology, edited by Jean Petitot, Francisco Varela, Bernard Pachoud, and Jean-Michael Roy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 46. See, for example, Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 47. Gadamer's view appears inconsistent in virtue of his dual allegiance to mutually exclusive forms of phenomenology. Roughly speaking, Hegel is an antifoundationalist and Husserl is a foundationalist. Gadamer's quasiHegelian reliance on history points toward historical relativism. His simultaneous reliance on Husserlian phenomenology in a broad sense points in the direction of extrahistorical absolute claims to know. For instance, for method he substitutes description that, he claims, cannot be seriously denied and that must form the basis of all science. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garret Barden and John Cumming (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 465; for his concern to connect this neo-Heideggerian view with Kant's theory, see xvi. 48. Guthrie reliably describes Aristotle's view of Plato, as opposed to Plato's theory. "Plato reasoned that reality, if it is a possible object of knowledge and not simply a wavering opinion, must be something constant and unchanging. Now the world in which we live is subject to constant change, as Heraclitus truly said. Therefore, either reality is unknowable or it exists elsewhere than in this world. The philosopher's faith that it must be knowable thus led him to posit a transcendental realm of eternal and changeless substance as the only reality and the object of true knowledge." W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), VI:101. 49. See Aristotle, Meta., vii, 13, 1039b, 27-29; see also Post. Ana., 87b, 38. 50. See Aristotle, Meta., iv, 1. For discussion, see Emerson Buchanan, Aristotle's Theory of Being (London: William Cloves, 1962). 51. See Aristotle, De Caelo, 2,1, 283b, 26ff. 52. See Kurt Pritzl, "Opinions as Appearances: Endoxa in Aristotle," Ancient Philosophy XIV, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41-50. Pritzl in part reacts to G. E. L. Owen, "Tithenai ta phainomena," in G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialec-

tic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, edited by Martha Nussbaum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 239-51. 53. See Aristotle, Meta., iv, 4, 1007b, 8-9. 54. See Aristotle, Meta., iv, 3, 1005b, 12-19. 55. See, on this point, Myles Burnyeat, "Idealism and Greek Philosophy." 56. See William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism: A Pluralistic Universe (London: Longmans, 1912). 57. As part of his new Jamesian view of realism, Putnam talks about a "common philosophical error of supposing that 'reality' must refer to a single super thing, instead of a way of looking at the ways in which we endlessly renegotiate—and are forced to renegotiate—our notion of reality as our language and our life develops." Hilary Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind," The Journal of Philosophy XCI, no. 9 (September 1994): 452. 58. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 198, pp. 283-84. 59. See Republic, 538-39. 60. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Scimce, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 8. 61. See Charles Baudelaire, "Le Peintre de la vie moderne," in Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1968), 546-65. 62. For a recent instance, see Michael Williams, Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 63. See Richard Rorty, "Intuition," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan/The Free Press), IV:204. 64. "We proceed in step-by-step discussion from inference to inference, whereas He [God] conceives through mere intuition." Galileo Galilei, Opere (Florence: Edizione nazionale, 1929), "Dialogo VII," 129; my translation. 65. For an account, see William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American Library, 1958). 66. See Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face, edited by James Conant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 51. 67. See "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 1-41. 68. See, for example, J. Cornman, Perception, Common Sense and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). 69. According to Brandom, since the objects of the sciences have histories rather than natures, we can have correct knowledge about, say, electrons and aromatic compounds. See Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 26-27. 70. See Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (1914; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1960). 71. See Myles Burnyeat, "Idealism and Greek Philosophy," 18-19. 72. See Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," 453.

73. See Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (1963; reprint, Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 127-96. 74. See "Dewey Between Darwin and Hegel," in Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 111:290-306. 75. See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 76. See Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); see also Brandom, Articulating Reasons. 71. The text says "prope-Hegelianism," which looks like a misprint. Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," 11. 78. See John McDowell, "Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant, and Intentionally," The Journal of Philosophy XCV, no. 9 (September 1998): 431-91. 79. See Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 80. See Thomas Nagel, The Vieiv from Nowhere (New York: Oxford, 1986). 81. See Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard Unversity Press, 1985): "In a scientific enterprise there should ideally be convergence on an answer, where the best explanation of the convergence involves the idea that the answer represents how things are" (126). 82. See Donald Davidson, " A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, edited by Ernest LePore (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 83. See Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chapter 2: "Two Philosophical Perspectives," 49-74. 84. See Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses." 85. See Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses." 86. See Hilary Putnam, Reneiving Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). 87. See Richard Boyd, "Observation, Explanatory Power, Simplicity: Toward a Non-Humean Account," in Observation, Experiment and Hypothesis in Modem Physical Science, edited by Peter Achinstein and Owen Hannaway (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), and Boyd, "Metaphor and TheoryChange: What Is a Metaphor For?" in Metaphor and Thought, edited by A. Ortony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 481-532. 88. See Steven Weinberg, "The Revolution that Didn't Happen," The Nezv York Review of Books, October 8, 1998, 48-52. 89. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 170-71. 90. See Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); and Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

91. See Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934). See Albert Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality Be Considered Complete?" Physical Review, Series 2, 47 (1935): 777-80. 92. See Niels Bohr, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality Be Considered Complete?" Physical Review, Series 2, 48 (1935): 696-702. 93. For Bohr's later views, see Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: Wiley, 1958); Bohr, "Conversations with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Quantum Physics," in Albert Einstein: PhilosopherScientist, edited by P. A. Schilpp (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court, 1969), 199-241. 94. See David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957); David Bohm and B. J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (London: Routledge, 1993). 95. See David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1997). See also Bryce S. Dewitt and Neill Graham, eds., The ManyWorlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).

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Epistemological Foundationalism

T

he preceding chapter argued that Platonic realism provides the main normative philosophical view of what it means to know. The two main strategies for knowledge based on the normative conception provided by Platonic realism are intuitionism and epistemological foundationalism. In modern philosophy, the ancient reliance on direct intuition of the real gives way to a foundationalist strategy to bring the mind in touch with the mind-independent external world. Intuition has never entirely disappeared as an epistemological strategy It is currently favored in various forms of direct realism. Yet the decline of intuition has propelled foundationalism to the center of the philosophical stage as the main modern epistemological strategy for knowledge of the real. Chapters 2-5 will consider various aspects of epistemological foundationalism in some detail. Foundationalism, which has been central to the modern philosophical debate on knowledge, although currently less popular than it has been in the past, is still popular. In this respect, it is useful to distinguish between the philosophical or scientific identification with foundationalism and the affirmation of epistemological claims that presuppose a foundationalist approach. It is at least interesting that foundationalism is not accorded attention in cognitive disciplines other than philosophy For instance, it plays no visible role in modern science, where everything happens as if foundationalism were an irrelevant consideration. Neither Galileo

nor Newton nor Einstein nor indeed any reputable scientist in modern times has ever tried, or even voiced the concern, to put science on a foundationalist epistemological basis. Yet philosophers deeply acquainted with science, such as Descartes, Kant, and Carnap, have made this effort, as if science without an epistemological foundation was somehow incomplete. Philosophical allegiance to foundationalism waxes and wanes, but the commitment to a view of knowledge that depends on a foundationalist strategy, which has been strong throughout the modern tradition, remains strong at present. Claims to know metaphysical reality are as frequent now as they have ever been in the modern debate. Foundationalism is more frequently invoked than examined, more frequently mentioned than studied in detail. Standard reference works often omit an entry for foundationalism.1 When it is studied, it is often conflated with other epistemological approaches. The difference between the foundations of knowledge and foundationalism is mainly honored in the breach.2 Rorty, who is widely seen as a leading antifoundationalist,3 is in fact committed to an empiricist form of Cartesian foundationalism as the only acceptable normative strategy for knowledge, a strategy he regards as unsuccessful and a pursuit he regards as not worth the effort since nothing interesting can be said about it. This chapter will provide an elementary presentation of some main types of epistemological foundationalism in the context of modern Western philosophy. Although it is usually assimilated to forms of empiricism 4 and although there are empirical forms of foundationalism, epistemological foundationalism is not necessarily empirical at all.

CLARIFYING "FOUNDATIONALISM" Widespread contemporary agreement about foundationalism's demise, or at least irrelevance, masks an inability even to agree on the meaning of the word. We can begin by trying to get clear about "foundationalism" and related terms. "Foundationalism" is widely but imprecisely employed to refer to a large number of related doctrines, including reasoning on the basis of one or more indefeasible principles, a claim for certainty, an insistence on the subject (or subjectivity) as an indispensable clue to objectivity (or claims for objective cognition), or even the supposed capacity to specify the conditions of the possibility of knowledge.

"Foundationalism" is often conflated with "foundation." 5 The latter is a common English word with multiple meanings, including "the act of founding," "the basis upon which something is founded," "funds given for the permanent support of an institution or cause," "an underlying natural or prepared base or support," and "a body or ground upon which something is built up or overlaid." One speaks, by analogy, of the foundations of knowledge. 6 Aristotle is often said to be interested in the foundations of knowledge, understood as first philosophy, by virtue of his concern to enumerate the primary factors of being. 7 "Foundationalism" is typically understood on a Cartesian model to be concerned with certain knowledge, to be apodictic, beyond doubt of any kind, defeating even the most radical forms of skepticism, and so on. Descartes is often mistakenly regarded as the most important or even the first foundationalist; mistakenly so, since this strategy is already present in ancient philosophy. In his wake, foundationalism takes many forms, typically including an initial principle (or principles) known (beyond doubt) to be true that provide(s) the requisite foundation from which the remainder of the theory can be rigorously deduced. Beyond this minimal description, there appears to be little agreement about what "foundationalism" means or even who counts as a foundationalist. Chisholm lists no less than six basic foundationalist theses, of which the most basic seems to be self-justification, or selfpresentation. 8 Following Alston, Haack understands "foundationalism" in terms of two main ideas: epistemic standards are objectively grounded or founded and epistemology is an a priori discipline whose purpose is to legitimate or to found presumed empirical knowledge. 9 According to Haack, some beliefs are basic and others are derived. 10 Like many analytic philosophers, she distinguishes strong and weak forms of foundationalism. 11 Quine is seen by different observers to be a critic of foundationalism (Sosa), a coherentist (Goldman, Nelson), and even a foundationalist (Cornman). 12

TYPES OF FOUNDATIONALISM Foundationalism comes in many forms or flavors. All known types include a foundation, or basis, on which to construct a theory of knowledge, what Descartes, in a famous reference to Archimedes, describes

as "one p o i n t . . . fixed and immoveable." 13 Foundationalist theories of knowledge frequently appeal to the notion of a building or other structure that rests directly on its foundations or, in the case of a philosophical theory, on indefeasible conceptual underpinnings. For both a building and a theory of knowledge, if the underpinnings are secure, then nothing can shake the edifice erected on them. Modern foundationalists typically contend that all knowledge claims rest on, hence can only be justified by, a strategy that guarantees certainty. Understood in this manner, we can distinguish three ideal-typical forms of foundationalism relevant to ontology, perception, and principles. Ontological foundationalism typically appeals to a direct, intuitive grasp of the real, as in the Platonic theory of ideas in which thought surpasses appearance to grasp reality. Husserlian phenomenology, which is essentialist, describes a series of efforts to recover a similar claim for the direct grasp of phenomenal essences. 14 A second form of foundationalism, linked to perception in general, appeals to indefeasible perceptual statements, which, since they cannot be false, are necessarily true. Perceptual foundationalism, which originates in ancient stoicism, is widely exemplified in modern philosophy: in Descartes' rationalist emphasis on clear and distinct perceptions, in the persistent empiricist concern with perceptions resistant to problems of illusion and delusion in F. Bacon and Locke, and in analytic philosophers running from Moore's commonsensism, the basis of his refutation of idealism, to Putnam's recent turn to what he calls natural realism. 15 A third type of foundationalism is based on principles regarded as necessary and as necessarily true. Examples include the Aristotelian claim for the law of noncontradiction as a necessary basis of all discussion, 16 the Cartesian view of the cogito as indubitable, or even, in some interpretations, the Hegelian idea of Being.

FOUNDATIONALISM FROM PLATO TO DESCARTES Foundationalism is often, but incorrectly, seen as emerging with modern philosophy, above all in Descartes. It would be more accurate to say that he popularized and refined a preexisting strategy for knowledge whose origins lie in ancient Greek philosophy. The idea that Descartes does not discover but rather only reformulates foundationalism is plausible in the light of recent research on the

genesis of his theory. In supposedly beginning modern philosophy, Descartes is still often represented, as he was represented by Hegel at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as making a clean break with scholasticism. 17 This description, while comforting to Descartes' admirers, overestimates his originality. Recent discussion emphasizes the important continuity on different levels between Descartes and earlier writers, particularly Augustine, 18 but also as concerns the conception of science 19 and so on. A similar continuity is easily demonstrated with respect to foundationalism. In foundationalist theories, claims to know are typically justified by virtue of a first principle, or set of principles, known to be true, from which the remainder of the theory strictly follows. The popular view of Cartesian foundationalism correctly depicts an indefeasible foundation, the subject, or cogito, whose existence cannot be denied and on whose basis, through a basically linear argument, an equally indefeasible epistemological theory can be constructed. This approach is very old. Plato's Republic presents a similar vision of philosophy as a self-justifying science that further justifies the knowledge claims of all other sciences. 20 Only a philosopher knows in the highest, final sense of the term. Knowledge (episteme) is not hypothetical, but anhypothetical. The various types of knowledge culminate in dialectic, which is described as the direct, anhypothetical grasp of first principles. 21 Knowledge in the highest sense eschews hypothesis of any kind in favor of the direct grasp of a nonhypothetical first principle (arche) from which to reason to a conclusion. As the anhypothetical first principle (to ep'archen anhypotheton, 510B), the form of the good, which is situated beyond other beings (epikeina tes ousias, 509C), is superior to, as well as the cause of, everything else. The good, which Plato compares to the sun, is the first principle of all that exists (epi ten tou pantos archen ion, 511B). The linear Platonic view of philosophy, in which claims for truth and knowledge are based on an anhypothetical foundation from which the remainder of the theory is rigorously developed, later influences Aristotle, Plotinus, and, through Descartes, the entire modern discussion of knowledge. Aristotle can be read as a foundationalist and as an antifoundationalist. His view that the contents of mind are similar to the independent external world is foundationalist. 22 For centuries, the theory of science in Posterior Analytics has been understood to be founded in first principles that are directly grasped through cognitive intuition. 23 Yet he can also be read in a completely opposite way.

According to a recent reading, Aristotle remains skeptical about the idea of epistemological certainty and the supposed infallibility of proposed scientific principles. 24 In his theory of science, Aristotle reinterprets the cognitive role of mathematics, the penultimate model of knowledge in the Republic, as the ultimate model for knowledge. In the Posterior Analytics, he holds that we cannot go beyond hypotheses to grasp the truth of the first principles. In his account of presuppositions, he takes mathematics, particularly geometry, as the cognitive paradigm in his discussion of scientific demonstration. 25 He rejects both an infinite regress as well as a circular argument in favor of a first principle (or principles) that neither admits of nor requires demonstration. 26 He defines demonstration as "deduction from what is necessary" 27 in suggesting the view of mathematics that continues to hold sway until the time of Kant. In stressing a mathematical model in his theory of science, Aristotle departs from the linear Platonic view of philosophy based on a single principle, which is further developed in Plotinus.28 In the Enneads, Plotinus follows the Platonic conception of philosophy as reaching and then returning from a first principle understood as the good.29 As for Plato, so for Plotinus the highest principle is an absolute unity. Following Plato, Plotinus understands his theory as philosophizing about the one. 30

CARTESIAN FOUNDATIONALISM Descartes, who is routinely understood as the initiator and main example of foundationalism, combines foundational and antifoundational impulses in his complex position. His antifoundationalism, which is rarely mentioned and remains undeveloped, is evident in the sixth part of the Discourse. In examining the idea of a logical circle, he claims that, with respect to experience, effects are explained by causes and causes by effects.31 This view is also mentioned in a letter to Clerselier (June or July 1646), where he insists that no single principle is adequate to explain all things. 32 The antifoundationalist impulse in his writings is far outweighed by his better-known, more developed, very influential foundationalist impulse. His choice of an epistemological model is influenced by Plato and especially Aristotle. Descartes is obviously impressed by the traditional foundationalist interpretation of Aristotle, which is delivered through the medieval tradition. He maintains in the Rules that "mankind has no

road toward certain knowledge open to it, save those of self-evident intuition and necessary deduction." 33 Yet he rejects the Aristotelian view that the first principles of a theory are neither demonstrable nor require demonstration. He favors a qualified return to the Platonic idea that the initial principle or principles must be demonstrated. Cartesian foundationalism requires the rigorous deduction of a complete theory, adequate to explain anything and everything, from an initial principle known to be true. Descartes holds that the truth of the initial principle is not directly grasped (Plato) nor assumed without proof (Aristotle), but, since it cannot be denied, it is necessarily true. According to Descartes, (who silently presupposes the Aristotelian law of the excluded middle since the cogito cannot be doubted without being affirmed hence cannot be false, it must, therefore, be true. As an indubitable truth, the cogito functions within the Cartesian theory as a first principle, on whose basis, through rigorously deductive reasoning, a theory can be constructed that is necessarily true. There is an obvious analogy between this argument and the indirect form of mathematical proof that is widely used in geometry. In his proof of the cogito in the Discourse on Method, Descartes doubts all things that could possibly be false with the aim of determining whether anything is absolutely certain before concluding that he cannot doubt his own existence. In the Discourse, he explicitly claims that the cogito can resist skepticism to become the first principle of philosophy.34 In the Meditations, he develops a similar train of reasoning to thwart a fictitious evil genius bent on deceiving him. He maintains that if he is deceived he must also exist before concluding that he exists each time he claims to do so. 35 Descartes, who disagrees with his predecessors with regard to the first principles of knowledge, continues to follow the canonical view of philosophy as the self-justifying guarantor of knowledge of all kinds. In a letter to Picot about the Principles of Philosophy, he describes philosophy, or true philosophy, as a tree of knowledge. 36

BACON, LOCKE, AND EMPIRICAL FOUNDATIONALISM The influence of Cartesian foundationalism, which literally reaches into every corner of modern philosophy, can scarcely be overestimated. Hobbes, who criticizes Descartes in detail, 37 was also influenced by him. This influence is manifest in the obviously Cartesian

form of Hobbes's view of certainty, which is based on the certainty of the prior stages in the reasoning, 38 and in Hobbes's description of "sense and memory" as "absolute knowledge [of] fact." 39 Though Descartes is a rationalist, modern foundationalism often takes an empiricist form. The problem he and later thinkers of rationalist, empiricist, and other persuasions face is always the same; namely, how to bring the mind in touch with the mind-independent world. Compared to rationalism, empiricism inverts the relation of the subject to the cognitive object. In rationalism, the problem of knowledge comes down to a justified inference from the mind to the external world. In current terminology, the problem lies in making good on externalism. In empiricism, the problem of knowledge takes the form of an explanation of the contents of mind, such as a plausible account of the relation between sensation and belief, 40 a historical-causal view of reference, 41 and so on as a function of the external world. As exemplified by Bacon, Locke, Hume, Reid, and many others, English empiricism typically debates versions of the claim that indubitable knowledge follows directly, or does not follow at all, from experience. Bacon and Locke argue for indubitable knowledge as following directly from experience. Hume accepts the same standard in skeptically contesting the very idea of empirical knowledge. Bacon laments that human reason is a magnificent structure bereft of a foundation before recommending the reconstruction of all human knowledge on proper foundations. 42 He regards the mind as an organ to receive knowledge about the mind-independent external world as it is. More realistic than Locke, he fixes two conditions for reliable knowledge. The first requires "keeping the eye steadily fixed on the fact of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are." 43 The second requires the observer to prevent the mind from distorting what it sees, or acting "like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of the thing by mingling its own nature with it." 44 The case for the empiricist view of the mind as a mirror of the world is arguably made most impressively in Locke's influential conception of simple ideas as necessarily true. 45 According to Locke, ideas, which have no truth value in themselves, are true or false only when they refer beyond themselves. He considers three specific cases: how different people use the same names, the relation between ideas and the independent external world, and whether ideas grasp the essence of whatever it is to which they refer. He locates abstract ideas, which are

derived from experience and then accorded a name, between the name of the thing and the thing to which the name refers. According to Locke, complex ideas in the mind are composed of simple ideas that come into the mind through sensation and reflection but that the mind is not itself at liberty to create. 46 The understanding is passive with respect to simple ideas, which are imprinted on it from without. In echoing Bacon, he suggests that, like a mirror, simple ideas correctly represent the external world. 47 Mistakes in complex ideas arise through the incorrect combination of simple ideas, which supposedly cannot be in error concerning the external world. Locke believes we can securely build on simple ideas, which are necessarily true and whose correct combination necessarily leads to knowledge and truth. He offers two arguments for his foundationalist interpretation of simple ideas: their divine source and what would now be regarded as the failure of a correspondence theory of truth. He interprets his claim that simple ideas are provided by God 48 in two ways. First, since simple ideas cannot be false, they are necessarily true with respect to the existence of things outside us. Second, they cannot be false with respect to the essence of such things, since our complex ideas of the essence of anything merely consist in the combination of simple ideas, which are necessarily true. The only way we can be mistaken is when we mistakenly combine simple ideas in making a false judgment. 49 The second argument, which is independent of the first, is based on the observation that our access to things is not direct; we have access to them only through the ideas we have of them. Since we cannot compare our idea of anything with that thing in order to determine if it is correct, our idea of it cannot be wrong. For a person "cannot make a wrong or false idea of a thing which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea has of it." 50

KANT AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONALIST Kant's foundationalism is often overlooked, because his link to Descartes is not widely perceived. This link is often overlooked for two reasons. First, Kant is frequently understood in relation to Hume, who, according to his own testimony, awoke him from his dogmatic slumber; to Leibniz, who strongly influenced his early writings; or through others, such as Wolff.51 Second, any positive link to Descartes

is concealed because of the long series of mainly negative things he says about the French thinker. Kant consistently treats Descartes, like all his predecessors, as the author of a series of unsupported assertions, as not yet a critical philosopher, as not yet a philosopher at all; in a word, as merely another dogmatist. He frequently criticizes Descartes. He applies his general denial that objects can be deduced from concepts, 52 an objection he later brings against Fichte, 53 to the Cartesian form of the ontological argument and to the proof of the cogito. 54 He insists several times on the need to find a third way between dogmatism, represented by Descartes, and skepticism, represented by Hume. In the "Refutation of Idealism," he refutes Descartes' supposed denial of the existence of the external world in maintaining contra Descartes and Berkeley that the existence of the external world is a necessary condition of conscious experience. Descartes profoundly influences Kant on a number of levels. Both Descartes and Kant rely, surreptitiously in the latter's case, on a causal theory of perception. For Descartes, since ideas in the mind are directly caused, under certain conditions a backward inference from cause to effect or from an idea of a thing to the thing is plausible. But for Kant, since the appearances are "constructed" by the subject, an inference from the appearance to what appears is never possible. Kant further follows Descartes in basing claims for objective knowledge on a conception of subjectivity from which the remainder of the theory is rigorously deduced. He explicitly identifies the original unity of apperception as the highest point of his critical philosophy.55 It is certainly no accident that the subject, or "I think" ("Ich denke," from German denken = to think) which, according to Kant, must be able to accompany all contents of consciousness, is an exact translation of the Cartesian cogito ("I think," from Latin cogitare).56 Kant also preserves Descartes' characteristic emphasis on apodicticity in his conception of the categories he claims to deduce as apodictictically certain. 57 It is an error to see Kant as replacing Cartesian certainty by necessity.58

AFTER FOUNDATIONALISM? Plato's texts have long been a rich source of brilliant ideas of the most varied kinds, which continue to inspire readers. Yet what has emerged as Platonism on the basis of Plato's texts is increasingly difficult to de-

fend. Probably no one now literally accepts the theories as they were originally presented in the texts. At best, some writers defend a reading of their spirit. Whitehead maintains that his own philosophy of organism represents the kind of theory that emerges when appropriate changes are made in Platonism to account for the accumulated experience of more than 2,000 years since Plato's time. Claims for Plato's influence on the succeeding discussion are typically vague, hence difficult to evaluate. Through Platonism, Plato decisively influences Western philosophy as we know it in two ways. First, he provides what is still the most influential formulation of the canonical view of knowledge as knowledge of the real, which at the beginning of the third millennium still dominates the discussion. Second, he anticipates, or perhaps even formulates, an influential version of foundationalism, which, in the Cartesian reformulation, has dominated the entire modern debate. The concern with Platonic realism, hence with f o u n d a t i o n a l s ' epistemology strategy to justify them, which still remains strong, is offset by a steadily increasing disenchantment with any form of epistemological foundationalism. Although many are still committed to making good on foundationalist epistemological strategy and even more raise cognitive claims that can only be justified through an appeal to foundationalism, many others criticize foundationalism, sometimes while continuing to make claims that require it. An illustration among many is Heidegger's analysis of the categories of human existence, which requires a foundationalist justification he does not provide. The criticism of foundationalism began almost as soon as it was formulated in Descartes, for instance in Vico's anti-Cartesian historicist view of knowledge, which precludes knowledge of the mind-independent real because it is in favor of knowledge of human history. Paradoxically, the critique of foundationalism depends on the emergence of a specifically foundationalist line of argument. To the best of my knowledge, concerted criticism of foundationalism began only after it was formulated as a distinct epistemological strategy by Descartes. Since Descartes, as many writers have worked to identify and improve his line of argument and as foundationalism has become more visible, it has become easier not only to assess, criticize, and reject but also to espouse, reformulate, and work to correct the flaws of earlier versions of this strategy for knowledge.

In the current phase of the discussion, foundationalism as it has been known is widely but not unanimously criticized and often rejected but also widely defended in many and occasionally surprising ways. Perhaps none is more surprising, the basis of his effort to work out a short-lived coherence theory of truth, than Davidson's obviously foundationalist claim that, since we understand each other, we are in the main correct about the way the world is. 59 In later abandoning coherence, 60 Davidson also explicitly gives up the very type of realism it entails. 61 Current attitudes toward foundationalism, as they have been since Descartes, are sharply divided. The minoritarian conviction (Chisholm, Apel, Habermas, Haack, Swinburne, and others) that some version of foundationalism is or is at least potentially viable is outweighed by the majoritarian belief that in the debate since Descartes, foundationalism has died a natural death and cannot be revived. Rorty, a professed pragmatist, embraces postfoundational skepticism, which depends on the demonstrable failure of foundationalism, in claiming there is no successful or even potentially successful alternative strategy for truth and knowledge. Still others, including most, perhaps all, pragmatists, are currently seeking approaches to knowledge that avoid foundationalism of any kind. Since foundationalism is so difficult to defend, one should not be surprised at the growing interest in antifoundational, postfoundational, and nonfoundational strategies. Yet for those still committed to Platonism, alternatives that give up claims to know the way the world really is seem illusory or worse. The attitude toward Descartes is crucial to the proper stance to take after foundationalism. Foundationalists and many of their critics, those committed to the success of epistemological foundationalism and those who believe it fails in any known formulation and cannot succeed, tend to share the conviction, which Rorty prominently illustrates, that only foundationalism yields truth and knowledge worthy of the name. Husserl, Apel, Rorty, and other would-be foundationalists and both those committed to Cartesianism and anti-Cartesians such as the French postmodernists, including Lyotard, who rejects overarching explanations, 62 believe that the only plausible alternative to foundationalism is skepticism. Others who criticize Descartes while adopting a weaker cognitive standard, hence avoiding skepticism, include Hegel, Peirce, most if not all of the other pragmatists, Merleau-Ponty, and many others. 63

It is not surprising, since pragmatism arose in the wake of Peirce's effort to provide a post-Cartesian view of knowledge, that pragmatists, who typically abandon claims to know the real as it is, generally take a weaker, anti-Platonic or non-Platonic approach to knowledge. Among analytic neopragmatists, Rorty, who is an epistemological skeptic, is an exception. His skepticism, which derives from his conviction that analytic foundationalism fails and must fail, is linked to a new opposition between knowledge and interpretation, or epistemology and hermeneutics broadly construed. Gadamer, who regards hermeneutics as continuous with epistemology, implausibly maintains without argument of any kind that hermeneutics "solves" the epistemological problem. He is opposed by Rorty, who maintains a strict but wholly arbitrary distinction between epistemology and hermeneutics in order to equate the failure of foundationalism with a form of skepticism that cannot be alleviated through a hermeneutical turn. Rorty's commitment to Cartesian foundationalism reflects an underlying Platonism. Contemporary Platonists such as Rorty regard hermeneutics to be a failure of epistemological nerve. They believe that mere interpretation cannot lead to knowledge worthy of the name, which requires a grasp of reality as it is that the antirealist Rorty denies but Putnam, Davidson, and others still promise. According to Rorty, in lieu of bringing the mind in contact with the real, there is only interpretation. Yet to accept interpretation as a source of truth and knowledge would mean giving up claims to know the way the world really is. After foundationalism, the main strategy for knowledge is, as it has always been, interpretation. It is not necessary to equate interpretation, our main current source of knowledge, with skepticism. Numerous philosophers, including all the pragmatists, with the prominent exception of Rorty, accept interpretation instead of foundationalism. 64 Interpretation is also popular in continental philosophical circles. For Dilthey and Heidegger, interpretation leads to knowledge, but only within a specific domain. On the contrary, for Gadamer there is only interpretation from different angles of vision. At present only Rorty, who takes a very extreme view, regards interpretation as tantamount to skepticism. Rorty's influential attack on the theory of knowledge belongs to the very discussion he rejects. It is then at least interesting that after claiming there is nothing interesting to say about knowledge, he publicly

identifies with thinkers such as Sellars, Davidson, and Brandom, who are mainly concerned to say what can be reasonably said about precisely what Rorty does not even want to mention. His introduction to The Linguistic Turn reflects a deep commitment to what he at the time perceived as the revolutionary potential of analytic philosophy Influenced by the early Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Schlick, he then took the view that clarification of language was crucial to dispelling 'false' or only apparent philosophical problems. It is no accident that Schlick's essay, portentously entitled "The Future of Philosophy," is placed at the very beginning of the volume. At the time, Rorty believed that analytic theory either had or eventually would solve the problem of knowledge. Rorty, who came to believe that his earlier approach was mistaken, later retracted many of his more enthusiastic claims about analytic philosophy. 65 In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, he began to elaborate an antiepistemological stance opposed to claims about truth and knowledge and further discussion of epistemology. Like the Young Hegelians, the early Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, and many others, Rorty later came to believe that the traditional philosophical concern with knowledge is no longer a viable option. Rorty is generally perceived as articulating a deeply felt discouragement about any specifically philosophical approach that is widely shared by contemporary philosophers. He serves as a lightening rod for thinkers skeptical about epistemology and those disinterested in further pursuit of the discipline—in a word, for disgruntled practitioners of the art—rather than as a stimulus to further reflection about knowledge. If Rorty is right, there is nothing interesting to say about truth and knowledge, including the conflict between the partisans and foes of foundationalism or even about the idea of a postfoundational theory of knowledge. The entire theme is a sort of nonissue, a typical topic invented by philosophers who have nothing better to do. In assessing the significance of this skeptical view of philosophical prospects, it is useful to remember that other than open dialogue with no preconditions, philosophy has no decision procedure. Except for a loss of interest among the discussants, there is no easy way to bring the philosophical discussion to a close. Explicit attention to foundationalism is presently on the decline. Yet it does not follow that the debate between foundationalists and antifoundationalists is over or that there is nothing further interesting to say or even that the latter have definitively vanquished their opponents. Rorty's skeptical conclusion that the only thing to say about knowledge is that there is nothing in-

teresting to say about knowledge is effectively refuted by the widespread debate about his own attack on the very idea of a theory of knowledge, which finds it interesting and worthy of further discussion. Rorty's effort to deflect attention from further consideration of the issues he examines is at most justified on tactical but not on evidentiary grounds. There is no reason to think that he has brought the discussion to a close and there is apparently no way to do so. The history of philosophy is replete with overly rapid declarations of victory, statements that an argument, a tendency, even a major current of the tradition is moribund. An example among many others is Habermas's recent unsubstantiated claim that German idealism, which he calls "philosophy of consciousness" (Bewufitseinsphilosophie), is over.66 Yet the future evolution of the tradition often reveals such pronouncements to be premature. It is by no means certain that the turn away from foundationalism, which Rorty favors, is the only way to go. It is even less clear that Rorty's inference holds that if foundationalism cannot be made out, the theory of knowledge needs to be abandoned. NOTES 1. See Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York/London: Macmillan/The Free Press/Collier Macmillan, 1967). For detailed discussion, see Paul Moser, Knowledge and Evidence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2. See, for example, Keith Lehrer, Knowledge 1974).

(Oxford: Clarendon Press,

3. See, for example, Konstantin Kolenda, Rorty's Humanistic Pragmatism:

Philosophy Democratized

(Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1990).

4. See Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1985); see also Susan Haack, Evidence and

Towards Reconstruction in Philosophy (Cambridge: Blackwells, 1995).

Inquiry:

5. Rorty discusses the foundations of knowledge before concluding that foundationalism, which he does not directly address, has failed. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 6. See Roderick M. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 7. See Aristotle, Meta., I, 3, 983, a 25-27. 8. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 3, 24-32, esp. 25.

9. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 13. 10. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 14.

11. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 17. 12. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 228n24. 13. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:149. 14. For this reading of Husserl, see Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Methuen, 1982): "Phenomenology sets out to isolate those structures of experience and judgment which cannot be doubted or called into question by even the most sceptical mind" (42). 15. See Hilary Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind," The Journal of Philosophy, XCI, no. 9 (September 1994): 445-517. 16. See Aristotle, Meta., Gamma iv. 17. See "Descartes," in G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Banden, edited by Eva Moldenhauer and K. R. Michel (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971-), 20:123-57. 18. See Etienne Gilson, La Liberte chez Descartes et la theologie (Paris: Alcan, 1913); see also Gilson, Etudes sur le role de la pense medievale dans la formation du systeme cartesien (Paris: Vrin, 1930). 19. See Daniel Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 20. See Ronald Polansky, "Foundationalism in Plato?," in Antifoundationalism Old and New, edited by Tom Rockmore and Beth J. Singer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 41-56. 21. See Plato, Republic, 510B, 533C. 22. Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 16a 3 - 8 "Now spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written symbols of spoken sounds But what these are in the first place signs of—affections of the soul—are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of—actual things—are also the same." 23. See Aristotle, Post. Ana., ii, 19. 24. See Martha Nussbaum, "Saving Aristotle's Appearances," in Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 282; see also Wolfgang Detel, Analytica Posteriora, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993). 25. W. D. Ross, Aristotle: A Complete Exposition of His Works and Thought (New York: Meridian, 1960), 45-52. 26. See Aristotle, Post. Ana. I, 3, 72 b, 19-23. 27. Aristotle, Post. Ana., I, 4, 73a, 24. 28. On the relation between Plato and Plotinus, see H. J. Kramer, Der Ursprungder Geistmetaphysik: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Platonismus ziuischen Platon and Plotin (Amsterdam: B. R. Griiner, 1967). 29. See Plotinus, The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, fourth edition revised by B. S. Page, with a foreword by Professor E. R. Dodds and an introduction by Paul Henry, S. J. (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), I, 3, 1, 36-37.

30. See Plotinus, The Enneads, VI, 9, 3, 616-17. 31. See Descartes, Philosophical Works, 1:129. 32. See Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1996), IV:444-45. 33. See Descartes, Philosophical Works, 1:45. 34. "This truth '/ think, therefore I am' was so certain and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking." Discourse, part 4, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:101. 35. "I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it." Descartes, Philosophical Works, 1:150. 36. "[A tree] whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches, which issue from this trunk, are all the other sciences." See Descartes, Philosophical Works, 1:211. 37. The third series of objections and replies in the Meditations concerns difficulties he raised. 38. See Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 5. 39. See Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 9. 40. See Roderick M. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 66-67. 41. This approach is primarily associated with Kripke and Putnam. See Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). 42. See the "Proem" to The Great Instauration, in Frances Bacon, The New Organon, edited with an introduction by Fulton H. Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), 3-4. 43. Bacon, The Nezv Organon, 29. 44. Bacon, The Neiv Organon, aphorism no. xli, 48. 45. For criticism of this general idea, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 46. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, collated and annotated by Alexander Campbell Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959), vol. I, 145. 47. See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1:142-43. 48. He contends that "their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are produced in us, and must be suitable to those powers he has placed in external objects, or else they could not be produced in us; and thus answering those powers, they are what they should be, true ideas." Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 11:519. 49. See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 11:523, 525. 50. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 11:525. 51. For the relation between Kant and Leibniz, see Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought, translated by James Haden, introduction by Stephan Korner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).

52. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 630, 568-69. 53. See "Open letter on Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, August 7, 1799," in Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99, edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 253-54. 54. In a passage on the paralogisms of pure reason, he remarks that "my existence also cannot be regarded as an inference from the proposition 'I think/ as Descartes held." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 422, 453. 55. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 134, 247. 56. "It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 131, 246. 57. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 765, 6 4 2 ^ 3 . 58. See Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 80. 59. See Donald Davidson, " A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, edited by Ernest LePore (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 307-19. 60. Donald Davidson, "Afterthoughts, 1987," in Reading Rorty: Critical Responses to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (and Beyond) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 134-38. 61. See Donald Davidson, Subjective, Inter subjective, Objective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 185,191. 62. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979). 63. See Tom Rockmore, "Hegel, Peirce and Knowledge," Journal of Speculative Philosophy 13, no. 3, (1999): 166-84. 64. A further exception would have to be made for Brandom, who thinks that science gets it right about the world. See Brandom, Articulating Reasons, 26-27. 65. See, for example, "Twenty Five Years After," in The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method, edited by Richard M. Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 371-74. 66. See Jiirgen Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken. Philosophische Aufsatze (Frankfort a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988).

ycafflfiak

Foundationalism as a System

E

pistemological foundationalism, which was for centuries the main modern philosophical strategy for knowledge, is now often assumed to be untenable in any form. However, many still defend it tooth and nail either directly through the formulation of new and potentially viable forms of foundationalism or through the defense of normative claims to know requiring a foundationalist epistemological strategy Under such circumstances, it is paradoxical that it is rarely examined in detail. In examining foundationalism, I pay particular attention to modern forms of foundationalism, which are generally less studied than its more recent types. This chapter considers the relation of foundationalism to system. It will be followed in the next chapter by a further study of foundationalism and representationalism and in the following chapter by discussion of some recent efforts to restate foundationalism as an acceptable strategy for knowledge. Throughout I criticize foundationalism, which at best cannot be more than temporarily defeated. Every known variety of this strategy can be shown to fail. Yet it is difficult, perhaps not possible, to show that the strategy as such fails without recourse to some form of transcendental argument. Since transcendental arguments are foundationalist, that amounts to attacking foundationalism with foundationalist means. Yet foundationalism can perhaps be defeated indirectly. In the conclusion, I advance an argument against Platonic realism with the

intention of removing the conceptual norm that is the main source of interest in epistemological foundationalism.

DESCARTES ON THE COGITO Cartesian foundationalism stands or falls on the conception of the cogito. Descartes insists on cognitive certainty. Yet the fact that everything, or nearly everything, about the cogito is controversial, that nothing about it is certain, confirms his own observation that in philosophy everything, or almost everything, is open to dispute. 1 If the cogito is the intended foundation, then perhaps Descartes later abandons foundationalism. The cogito never directly figures in the Principles, which either does not follow from it as a first principle, hence is not foundationalist, or follows from another principle. Descartes describes the cogito differently in different texts. In the Discourse, he says that his statement "I think, therefore I am" resists the arguments of the sceptics; but in the Meditations he says that the proposition "I am, I exist" is necessarily true when he says or thinks it. The ambiguous formulation in the Discourse can be taken to refer to the existence of the subject, again to the "I am," or even to the "therefore" that links the "I am" to the "I think." 2 The formulation of the Meditations can be read in two ways: as insisting on the cogito as performative or as true only while it is being performed. 3 The distinction between logical and psychological doubt introduced in the Meditations in the "Reply to the Second Set of Objections" calls into question whether Descartes proves, or even believes himself to have proved, that the subject is the indubitable foundation of all claims to know. The Cartesian claim for knowledge is routinely understood as logical, not as psychological. Yet in his reply, Descartes significantly claims only to allay psychological, not logical, doubt. 4 The supposed proof of the cogito is certainly problematic. It is not clear if it is proved in the second Meditation or only in the sixth. It is unclear if the cogito is innate 5 or follows from an inference 6 or again from a syllogism 7 or even from an intuition. 8 Descartes' proof of his own existence consists merely in the observation (in itself the converse of Augustine's observation that self-awareness requires that one exist) that one cannot rationally deny one's own existence. This rapid account, which is far from exhaustive, provides a short list of some of the many unresolved problems affecting the cogito. This

in turn indicates the generally problematic nature of Cartesian foundationalism, which depends on this concept. Descartes is committed to epistemological foundationalism, but it is far from certain what this commitment entails.

KANTIAN CATEGORIES AS FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES Kant's foundationalism, which is not often mentioned and sometimes denied, rests on the twelve concepts of the understanding, or categories he obscurely claims to deduce. Kant's approach to foundationalism is undermined by a triple unclarity concerning his understanding of principles, categories, and their deduction. In Aristotle, a principle is a beginning or starting point which, by the time of Wolff, becomes a fundamental, or highest, principle (Grundsatz). In Kant, the ambiguous term "principle" 9 refers to concepts of the understanding through which experience and knowledge become possible, necessary, or apodictic. 10 In the critical philosophy, the conditions of the possibility of objects of experience and knowledge are given in objectively valid, synthetic a priori judgments. 11 Kant's study of the conditions of knowledge through synthetic a priori judgments generally follows, but corrects, Leibniz and Hume. The former distinguishes truths of fact and truths of reason, 12 whereas the latter distinguishes matters of fact and relations of ideas. 13 Synthetic a priori judgments are said to be a priori, or prior to and apart from, experience and are further said to be necessarily true of any and all possible experience. Kant's view of mathematics was already outdated in his own time, when non-Euclidean geometry was already beginning to emerge. According to Kant, geometry, by which he means Euclidean geometry, since he thinks that geometry was already completed by Euclid, yields theoretical results that are necessarily binding for all experience. 14 His commitment to Euclidean geometry was later sharply attacked by Frege,15 Russell,16 Reichenbach, 17 and others. Russell, who is in this respect typical, draws a sharp distinction between pure and applied geometry in order to "destroy" Kant's idea of pure geometry as necessarily valid for any and all experience. 18 He claims that all the reasons Kant adduces in favor of his conception of mathematics can be refuted. Recent discussion of the difference between analytic and synthetic judgments appears to undermine Kant's basic distinction in a way that

arguably cannot be recovered. Carnap's conception of an ideal language presupposes a Kantian distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Quine's famous critique of this conception further refutes the underlying Kantian distinction on which Carnap's concept of ideal language depends. If this distinction cannot be drawn as Kant intended it, or if it cannot be redrawn in a way that captures his basic insight, then first principles that are binding for all possible experience cannot be identified; hence, the very possibility of an inference from the a priori plane to the a posteriori plane is also undermined. An example would be the inference from Euclidean geometry to the world as given in experience. Despite Kant's belief that it must be Euclidean, the experienced world could be Euclidean, non-Euclidean, or perhaps, if these possibilities fail to exhaust the realm of discourse, neither. Kant claims to deduce an exhaustive list of categories, or pure concepts through which the understanding transforms bare sensation 19 into perception and experience. The idea that there is a single, univocal, permanent set of categories for all rational beings has come under attack ever since Kant. Few observers think that anything like a single list of inalterable first principles can be drawn up. According to C. I. Lewis, since categories change as our views change in response to the facts, 20 the idea of a single, absolute human reason, such as fixed categories, is no more than a rationalist prejudice. 21 If categories change over time, then the proposed deduction of a univocal categorical scheme, a task that is central to Kant's theory of knowledge and that continues to occupy his German idealist successors, is a deep mistake. In that case, Kant's effort to ground certain knowledge in his identification of pure concepts of the understanding that function as first principles fails. Despite the determined efforts of his students over several centuries, the Kantian effort to deduce the categories remains shrouded in mystery. Kant, who maintains that the Aristotlean categories constitute a mere rhapsody,22 proposes to deduce them. The term "deduction," which in Aristotle and Descartes has a geometrical sense, has a juridical sense in Kant as concerns the statement of a right or legal claim.23 Kant distinguishes between empirical deductions of the categories in Locke and Hume 24 and his own transcendental deduction. He describes the latter as unprecedented 25 and as the most difficult of all metaphysical tasks.26 What he means by this term is perhaps best indicated in a summary comment at the end of the transcendental deduction in the B edition, where he compares deduction to (rigorous) exposition, which is surprising.27

What may have originally been intended by Kant as a single deduction is in fact constituted by a series of deductions. These include the metaphysical deduction, then the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the first (A) and second (B) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason28 and related remarks in the Prolegomena. We do not know how Kant intended to relate the different deductions. A number of the difficulties of Kant's deductions were already known to his contemporaries, many of whom were critical of his proposed categorical framework. Hegel, who typically characterizes the Kantian categories as basically static "pigeonholes," 29 hence incapable of grasping content, sees the post-Kantian Fichte as the first to deduce them.30 Kant's suggested deduction(s) remain(s) problematic in different ways. Here are four such difficulties. To begin with, there is the status of the claim. Kant identifies a deep difficulty in his description of the proposed deduction as an exposition. In a legal proceeding, doubt could subsist even after an exposition, say the rigorous presentation of a legal case or a point in law. In the same way, an exposition, even an exposition of the most rigorous kind, is not a proof. If "deduction" means "exposition," then it is inconsistent with claims for certainty, apodicticity, and so on. Second, Kant has no way to demonstrate the completeness of his list of categories, hence no way to assert closure. 31 Third, in his deduction, Kant relies on Aristotle's controversial idea of a necessary principle. According to Aristotle, the laws of noncontradiction 32 and the excluded middle 33 are necessary for rational discourse. Yet if one is prepared to abandon bivalent logic, then rational discourse can easily dispense with the excluded middle. 34 Fourth, Kant does not and arguably cannot show that the particular principles he regards as indispensable are anything more than artifacts of his historical period. He can no more establish there are necessary principles that alone render experience possible than he can establish that there are necessary principles that alone render morality possible.

DESCARTES, KANT, AND PHILOSOPHY AS A SYSTEMATIC SCIENCE Surprisingly little attention seems to be directed to the concept of system, which is closely linked to modern foundationalism. With the obvious exception of British empiricism, which features variations on the claim for direct knowledge, foundationalism typically features a conception of

system deductively derived from a first principle or principles. Aristotle's 35 view of demonstration as deduction from necessary principles is followed in different ways by Descartes 36 and then Kant. Aristotle is a systematic philosopher, although there is no system in his writings, only in the many books about him. Kant, who is equally systematic, is never clear about his view of system. But he is at least clear that a system requires a first principle or principles. In Kant's wake, system and foundation were distinguished as part of the effort to restate the critical philosophy in systematic form. Hegel, who is generally regarded as a quintessentially systematic thinker but never provides the famous system, defends a conception of system in which there is nothing resembling a Cartesian foundation. Descartes, who proposes no more than a partial system, rigorously links his own existence, a veracious God, and clear and distinct ideas. He depicts the cogito as an indubitable first principle, although he clearly does not deduce the remainder of his theory from it. Perhaps the closest he comes to system is his famous metaphor of the tree of knowledge. Kant's view of system continues to change throughout his writings. In the early "Nova Dilucidatio" (1755), where he is inspired by Leibniz, he insists that there can be at most a single fundamental principle, since if there were more than one, there would be more than one science. 37 In the Critique of Pure Reason, the relatively clear idea of a single fundamental principle is enormously complicated by his identification of the original transcendental unity of apperception, the twelve categories, and space and time as necessary for any and all objects of experience and knowledge. In the first Critique, Kant depends simultaneously on incompatible views of system, borrowed respectively from Wolff and Lambert. From Wolff, the great dogmatic philosopher, he takes the idea of system as a mere congeries of interrelated propositions. If this were Kant's view, then, despite his criticism of the Stagyrite, his own system would be no more than an Aristotelian rhapsody. From Lambert, a mathematician, he takes the idea of system as derived from an ultimate principle in an explicit reference to the quasi-rationalist conception of the foundation of a building. 38 Yet it is not clear whether there is a single basic conception of system in the critical philosophy or what the single idea is that supposedly confers systematic unity on the different types of knowledge or even that there is a single idea.

POST-KANTIAN IDEALIST VIEWS OF SYSTEM Kant's foundationalist approach to knowledge rapidly disappears in post-Kantian German idealism, which he inspires and which centers on completing his critical philosophy The post-Kantian reworking of the critical philosophy without a foundation is important in pointing the way to other systematic, but antifoundationalist, nonfoundationalist, and postfoundationalist approaches to objective knowledge claims in independence of foundations. Post-Kantian German idealism can be understood as an effort to restate Kant's critical philosophy in a way intended to provide the system required by, but lacking in, his position. Kant suggests that philosophy in any meaningful sense begins and ends in his position. Prior philosophy is not worthy of the name: the critical philosophy alone is true, and at any given time there cannot be more than one true philosophical system. 39 This line of reasoning suggests that Kant's critical philosophy is the only one worthy of the name and that there is and can be no other true philosophy But Kant undermines this claim in suggesting, since he thought he was misunderstood by his readers, that his writings should be interpreted solely according to their spirit. 40 This suggestion opened the door for his contemporaries to regard his position as representing an unfinished project. If we leave to one side those who rejected the critical philosophy, such as Hamann and Herder, except for Maimon, the important near contemporaries and immediate post-Kantians were convinced that Kant's position needed to be reconstructed, not according to its letter but rather according to its spirit in order to become the scientific system that he insisted on but that was lacking in his writings. This story, which has been told elsewhere in some detail, 41 unfolds in two phases: initially as the effort to reconstruct the critical philosophy as a founded and then later as an unfounded system. Suffice it to say that the main stages in the post-Kantian reconstruction of critical philosophy can be correlated with the names of Reinhold, Maimon, Fichte, and Hegel. Schelling belongs to the small group of great German idealists but does not play a significant role in the post-Kantian reformulation of the critical philosophy in systematic form. Reinhold, a minor philosopher who is today nearly unknown, is doubly important in this context. On the one hand, he is the first to argue that Kant's position needed to be restated in properly systematic form.

His initiation of the discussion about the systematic reformulation of the critical philosophy begins post-Kantian German idealism. On the other hand, that form of Reinhold's protean position that is offered to complete Kant's critical philosophy represents the last straightforward effort to "preserve" a foundationalist form of system in the debate running from Descartes through Kant to post-Kantian German idealism. For in reaction to Reinhold, the later German idealist discussion in Fichte and Hegel moves away from foundationalism, never to return. Reinhold's innovation does not lie in recasting Kant's critical philosophy in foundationalist form, since it is already foundationalist. It rather lies in a qualified return to a rationalist, quasi-Cartesian form of foundationalism which, unlike the critical philosophy, is clearly based on a single principle. In place of the cogito, Reinhold invokes the empirical capacity of representation (Vorstellungsvermogen), which allegedly cannot be denied, but which others, for instance the contemporary skeptics Aenesidemus (pseudonym for G. E. Schulze) and Maimon, immediately denied. Maimon, who was perhaps Kant's most acute contemporary critic, was never a Kantian and does not belong to post-Kantian German idealism. He holds, following Kant, that the critical philosophy is already fully developed, 42 hence cannot be further developed. He rejects the very idea of reformulating Kant's position, which would only weaken it. Through his critique of Reinhold, Maimon initiated the post-Kantian move away from foundationalism. In the wake of the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, numerous writers claimed to be the only one to understand the critical philosophy. It is not by chance that Kant thought that among the first generation of his readers, Maimon best understood his position 43 The version of Reinhold's unusually labile position in which he reformulates Kant's theory in foundationalist form is called the elementary philosophy (Elementarphilosophie). In his review of prior philosophy, Reinhold objects that the views of Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant are all viciously circular. 44 Maimon brings a similar objection against Reinhold's effort to found thought in an initial principle. He concedes that the latter's law of consciousness expresses an undeniable fact. But he maintains that other than through a confusion, neither a transcendental nor a psychological deduction can show that this principle (Satz) is an ultimately primitive fact (urspriingliches Faktum) without falling prey to circular reasoning (ohne einen Zirkel zu begehn).45

Maimon's "pragmatic" objection, which counts against any empirical form of foundationalism, is based on his reading of Aristotle. According to Maimon, principles neither need to, nor can, be proven theoretically, although they are proven in use. 46 This a posteriori, experience-based claim is inconsistent with Kant's view of categories as demonstrable a priori but consistent with his further view that they are demonstrated through the experience they make possible. 47 This type of "pragmatic" reading of Kant is further developed in C. I. Lewis's idea of a pragmatic a priori. 48 The idea that a given science rests on its underlying principle (or principles) suggests a model of knowledge based on geometry, since it depends on its axioms and postulates. Although geometrical axioms and postulates are merely assumed to be true, geometry is understood not as a hypothetical or merely probable but as an exact science. Kant notes there is something absurd about considering a geometrical theorem as merely probable 4 9 Yet this point no longer seems as obvious as it did to Kant. One result of the distinction between pure and applied geometry is the depiction of the latter as inexact and approximate. 50 Maimon's suggestion that principles are proven, to the extent they are proven at all, in practice or use only is revolutionary in the foundationalist context. Principles are not interesting because they are supposedly apodictic but because they enable the subsequent deduction of a science in the form of a systematic unity. Mathematical and physical principles, which have the status of mere fictions to explain a given phenomenon, remain hypothetical. Even if principles may appear self-evidently true, at most one can demonstrate the need to utilize the principles in question, not their veracity as such. 51 The typically "linear" foundationalist argument, familiar since Descartes, and perhaps much earlier since Plato, proceeds from an initial fixed point from which the remainder of the theory is deduced. In its place, Maimon suggests what can be described as a "circular" approach on the grounds that principles are proven in use. The idea that principles are demonstrated practically but not theoretically is exploited by Hegel as the basic insight of his own circular approach to knowledge. His "circular" approach amounts to the suggestion that a particular principle is proven if and only if it explains a given phenomenon or series of phenomena. This is a little like arguing from effect to cause, as Descartes suggests in a passage already mentioned, where the principle would be a conception of the cause that appears adequate to explain the perceived effect. 52 The problem, then, would

lie, as Descartes points out, in understanding how to correlate the principles, understood now as causes, with particular effects. 53 In the context of the post-Kantian discussion, Maimon indicates how to maintain claims for a system while rejecting the very idea of a foundation. In returning to the Aristotelian idea of a first principle as theoretically indemonstrable, he surpasses the foundationalist approach to knowledge dominant from Descartes to Kant and anticipates the rise of postfoundationalist epistemology Maimon does not break with Kant's theory in its suggestion of the idea of a principle that is demonstrated in use. But he certainly breaks with the idea of deducing the general conditions of experience and knowledge of objects prior to and apart from experience. In his qualified return to Aristotle, he shows how to construct a system without a foundation. It is not well known that Fichte and Hegel build on, but do not basically alter, Maimon's view of system without foundations. The implications of Maimon's critique of Reinhold's foundationalism are seen in Fichte and Hegel. Fichte typically claims to be the only true Kantian, in effect more Kantian than Kant, going so far as to assert, implausibly enough, since his position is demonstrably different from Kant's, that the critical philosophy follows from his own principles. Although critical of the author of the critical philosophy Hegel's commitment at least to the spirit of Kant's position is visible in many texts. These include an early letter to Schelling; 54 the so-called Differenzschrift; Hegel's first philosophical publication, which acknowledges Fichte as offering the correct extension of Kant; and the Phenomenology of Spirit, his first major work. Fichte and Hegel criticize foundationalism while proposing systematic but unfounded theories. The post-Kantian appeal to circularity makes a virtue of a supposed epistemological defect. Aristotle's influential rejection of circularity 55 led to the idea of a vicious circle, which is routinely advanced as an objection in the later discussion. Against Aristotle, Fichte rehabilitates circularity as intrinsic to, hence necessary for, thought. 56 He restates Reinhold's idea of system as following from a single principle, which, however, he regards as hypothetical. According to Fichte, who adopts a circular conception of philosophy, philosophy needs to begin with, but cannot demonstrate, an initial principle. 57 Hegel is widely known as the paradigm of a systematic thinker, but the famous system is nowhere to be found in his writings. It is absent even in the Encyclopedia, his most systematic work, which is, as he notes, merely a series of affirmations 58 that are preliminary to, but cannot substitute for, the system he never wrote. Hegel is often, but im-

precisely, regarded as an antifoundationalist, a nonfoundationalist, or a postfoundationalist, although there is no agreement as to what this means. 59 Even discussions centered on Hegel's view of knowledge overlook his understanding of foundationalism. 60 Hegel criticizes foundationalism, adopts circularity as an alternative to linearity, and invokes spirit as an alternative to Kantian pure reason. In the Differenzschrift, he rejects Reinhold's so-called founding and grounding tendency in a searching discussion.61 In place of a linear foundationalist view of knowledge, he adopts Fichte's circular conception through a double innovation. First, he maintains, like Maimon, that a theory that cannot base itself on an initial principle known to be true nonetheless demonstrates its claim to truth in practice. Second, for the first time in the German idealist discussion, he invokes the category of the whole—in a word, holism—as the regulative criterion of truth and knowledge. Hegel's striking commitment to circularity both early and late in his career registers his objection to foundationalism. In the early Differenzschrift, in criticizing Reinhold's foundationalism, he maintains that the process of knowledge is intrinsically circular while invoking the idea of the whole as the criterion of truth. When a theory is completely developed, when it forms a whole, when it completely explains experience, then it is demonstrated. 62 In the later "official" statement of his theory in the Encyclopedia, he describes philosophy as unlike other sciences in that since it formulates no presuppositions, 63 it is circular or, more precisely, the circle of circles. 64 Kant argues that claims to know must be justified a priori through a decontextualized, nonanthropological, asocial, and ahistorical conception of reason. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel substitutes a view of an "impure"—that is, a contextualized, social, historicized— form of reason, or spirit, 65 for Kant's pure reason as an alternative form of justification. In rejecting Kantian reason as unlimited, Hegel in effect argues that our claims to know arise out of, and can only be justified within, the social context. He makes the same point in different language in his well-known description of philosophy, which is limited by its historical moment. 66

FOUNDATIONALISM AND ANALYTICAL CRITICISM OF EMPIRICISM As concerns foundationalism, analytic philosophy can be roughly divided into two chronological phases with much overlap: the early em-

piricist phase remains foundationalist in Moore's commonsensism, which is still very close to such traditional English empiricists as Reid or, in a more logical form that is largely inspired by Frege, in Russell and in the early Wittgenstein. This initial phase, which is comparatively more homogenous, hence less diverse, possesses a more easily recognizable analytic profile. The later, more complex, phase, following repeated analytic attacks on empiricism, divides into three main subphases: a residual type of empiricism, which may or may not be foundationalist; various forms of Platonic or neo-Platonic realism, in effect forms of neo-Cartesianism that are invariably foundationalist; and an anomalous approach to objective cognition on the basis of empirical constraints that is not foundationalist. In different ways, the early analytic phase is still very close to classical British empiricism; hence, if the latter is foundationalist, it is foundationalist as well. Moore's commonsensism, Russell's knowledge by acquaintance, and Wittgenstein's insistence on the one-to-one relation between atomic propositions and atomic facts, which in turn inspired the protocol sentences in Carnap's position, are all forms of empiricist foundationalism. The various analytic critiques of idealism (Moore, Russell) and empiricism (Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Rorty, Davidson) address the question of objective knowledge on different levels: the former as concerns the very existence of the external world, which testifies to the persistence of a theme raised by Descartes; and the latter as concerns knowledge of the real whose existence is dogmatically assumed. Idealism is interesting in this respect in that ever since Kant, idealists in general, or at least some idealists, beginning with Descartes, have been mistakenly thought to deny the existence of the external world. For analytic writers, just as for Marxist-Leninists, idealism functions as a general term designating all that they reject. As concerns analytic philosophy, this includes the insistence on careful use of language and good argument in general, attention to the real empirical external world, insistence on realism, criticism of metaphysics, and so on. Kant, to whom analytic writers are attracted but of whom they remain suspicious, is crucial in the analytic debate for three reasons. First, his repeated efforts to refute " b a d " or unacceptable idealism were tacitly regarded as unavailing since, had he succeeded, further refutation would have been unnecessary. Second, depending on how Kant's position is read, it threatens both the particular forms of realism and empiricism favored by analytic writers. The Copernican turn

suggests that we must "construct" the cognitive object to know it, since we do not and cannot know mind-independent reality, which analytic thinkers such as Moore routinely claim to know Third, analytic writers who favor nonmetaphysical forms of Kantianism mainly overlook the idealist dimension of the critical philosophy. 67 Descartes' extension of Pyrrhonian skepticism to the problem of the existence of metaphysical reality, dogmatically assumed by ancient Greek thinkers, leads Kant to refute an attitude he mistakenly attributes to what can be called "bad" idealism. Kant's objection cannot extend to idealism in general since the critical philosophy is a form of idealism. It is doubtful that the argument in his celebrated "Refutation of Idealism" is as solid as it appears. It claims but does not demonstrate that Descartes or Berkeley denies the existence of the external world. The complaint is clearly unwarranted as concerns Descartes, who contends that some identifiable ideas in the mind correspond to mind-independent reality. There is not much to choose between the Cartesian view and Kant's counterclaim that "we have experience, and not merely imagination of outer things" through a causal analysis of the origin of "inner experience" as "possible only on the assumption of outer experience." 68 It is also false for Berkeley, who is only defending the views of commonsense, which never questions the existence of the external world, against the philosophers. Like Kant, the analytic attack on idealism as denying the existence of the external world assumes, but never actually shows, that any idealist denies the existence of the real. In this respect, there are two different attitudes. In opposition to Moore, the later Wittgenstein and the young Carnap both contend that the very question is merely a pseudoproblem. In "The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language," 6 9 Carnap follows Wittgenstein's view 7 0 that metaphysical sentences are unverifiable, hence meaningless. In developing this idea, Carnap argues that statements either asserting or denying the reality of the external world are merely pseudostatements. Moore, on the contrary, continues the refutation of idealism, which Wittgenstein rejects, in such statements as "Here is one hand . . . and here is another." 71 In On Certainty, Wittgenstein criticizes Moore in his contention that the latter misuses the term "to know" in refuting idealism, which cannot be refuted by claiming immediate knowledge; that is, cannot be refuted through a revised form of classical empiricism. If Wittgenstein is correct, efforts by Moore and others to refute supposed denials of the existence of the external world fail.

As the issue of refuting idealism's alleged denial of the real has receded, the analytic attitude toward idealism has begun to change. The analytic view of Hegel has described a great circle during the twentieth century leading away from and then back toward his position. For a short time at the end of the nineteenth century, under the influence of McTaggart, the Cambridge undergraduates Moore and Russell were or at least allegedly considered themselves to be idealists. 72 Their later turn away from British idealism, and from idealism as such, was important in the rise of analytic philosophy and in leading to the steady antipathy over many years toward Hegel. It is ironic that in the wake of the later Wittgenstein, whose supposed "social" justificationism is sometimes read as linguistic idealism, analytic figures such as Sellars, McDowell, Brandom, Stekeler-Weithofer, Grau, and perhaps Rorty have been making a qualified return to Hegel. Kant's empirical realism disintegrates in the analytic attack on empiricism, as a result of which selected analytic figures are committed to either one or the other, but rarely if ever to both. The analytic critique unfolds in Neurath's complaints about Carnap's protocols; Wittgenstein's objections to Moore's commonsensism; Sellar's attack on the myth of the given; Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, hence of the difference between ideal and real languages, in favor of holism; Davidson's rejection of the scheme-content distinction; and Rorty's rejection of analytic foundationalism. In the wake of this critique, the familiar classical empiricist claim to direct knowledge of the real is replaced by two main strategies: a holistic perspective that abandons correspondence and thus is superficially similar to Hegelian idealism; and various forms of realism. Relativization to a perspective, which Davidson refutes under the heading of the scheme and content distinction, is proposed in two forms by Wittgenstein and Sellars. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein denies knowledge by acquaintance on the grounds that correspondence is not clearly useful. 73 He further contends that, since justification comes to an end somewhere, claims to know are justified only to the extent that justification is possible, not by reference to a necessary presupposition but rather through reference to a conceptually prior, unjustified frame of reference, or language game. 74 Perhaps unwittingly, Wittgenstein is here close to Hegel's idea that claims to know are indexed to the historical moment that in Wittgenstein's later position takes the form of a mutable language game. 75 The difference, which is

important, is that unlike Wittgenstein, who never links cognitive claims to history, Hegel's entire conception of knowledge turns on this relation. In his Hegelian-inspired attack on the myth of the given, Sellars turns to "the logical space of reasons." 76 As McDowell points out in linking Sellars to Davidson's coherence theory, claims to know that are justified not empirically but merely by the so-called logical space of reasons could cohere but fail to correspond to anything in experience. Unlike realism, which is always foundational and always Platonic, relativization to a perspective is always antifoundationalist and antiPlatonic. Recent analytic discussion features claims to know the real indirectly, as in Putnam's internal realism, as well as forms of direct realism featured in Davidson, Devitt, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, and in Putnam's natural realism. In different ways, each of these writers advances varying versions of the claim to know reality as it is. A weaker, but more interesting, claim has recently been raised by McDowell, who tacitly concedes there is no way to know the mindindependent world as it is in his suggestion of, contra Quine, Davidson, and Sellars, the need to acknowledge empirical constraints on claims to know.

HEIDEGGER, DERRIDA, AND PRESENCE Analytic and continental philosophy divide roughly, not cleanly, around the distinction between foundationalism and antifoundationalism. 77 Analytic philosophy remains largely foundational through its continuing commitment to traditional metaphysical realism, hence to Cartesian and to Platonism. In continental philosophy, the trend from foundationalism to antifoundationalism is clear in phenomenology and in such allied movements as hermeneutics and structuralism. "Phenomenology," which refers to a very diverse series of positions in different languages and literatures, includes foundationalists such as Husserl and antifoundationalists like Hegel. As early as his phenomenological breakthrough at the turn of the twentieth century, when he is most Kantian, Husserl favors an imprecise form of foundationalism that incorporate elements derived from Cartesian rationalism and empiricism. He typically insists on an Archimedean point without which all rational striving for truth and knowledge must be

abandoned. 78 Like Descartes, but unlike Kant, Husserl later came to believe it is a fundamental error to deny that perception fails to come into contact with things in themselves. 79 Although strongly dependent on Husserl, later phenomenology has consistently but paradoxically moved in an antifoundationalist direction. This is evident in Heidegger, who is in this respect a bridge figure, and more clearly in those influenced by him, including MerleauPonty, Gadamer, Derrida, and such poststructuralists as Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari. Not enough attention has been devoted to the epistemological consequences of phenomenology With such obvious exceptions as Follesdall and Mohanty, who are important analytically inclined Husserl scholars, and Dummett, who has become increasingly interested in Husserl, there is a distinct tendency in the analytic discussion to ignore phenomenological ideas. Conversely, phenomenologists, or those influenced by them, are mainly uninformed about the current state of the epistemological debate. Yet they do not hesitate to make sweeping claims about it. Examples include Husserl's assertion (in relation to Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant) that "phenomenology is as it were the secret longing of the whole philosophy of modern times," 80 and Gadamer's curious claim (in discussion devoted to Husserl, Yorck, and Heidegger) about overcoming epistemology through phenomenology. 81 Heidegger's position, the epistemological consequences of which have not been widely studied, 82 is neither clearly foundational nor antifoundational but rather a hybrid combining both tendencies. An echo of the Kantian dualism of empirical realism and "constructivism" appears in Heidegger's incompatible dual conceptions of transcendental and hermeneutical truth. Transcendental phenomenological truth, or Veritas transcendentalism3 features a conception of truth as disclosure 84 consistent with the transcendental phenomenological thrust of the book, according to which phenomenology discloses being. Heidegger, who espouses correspondence, asserts that claims to know are true if and only if they correspond to the way the cognitive object is—that is, if they state what is the case in describing what something is. 85 Heidegger's other, incompatible, view of truth, which emerges in the context of his analysis of the hermeneutical circle of the understanding, favors a "constructivist" conception of knowledge according

to which to know anything is to interpret it as a function of its possible use or uses. According to Heidegger, all understanding of whatever kind, specifically including even the prepredicative seeing claimed in Husserlian phenomenology, is already interpretive. 86 Presuppositionless knowledge, at which Husserl aims, is not possible; all knowledge claims are based on interpretation, which never takes the form of a presuppositionless apprehension of what is. 87 Heidegger consistently rejects claims to be concerned with anything other than being. But Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Derrida, and others influenced by him are often concerned to draw out the epistemological implications of his position. Merleau-Ponty refutes Husserl's claim, which he made central to his position starting in 1911, that transcendental phenomenology necessarily turns on phenomenological reduction. According to Merleau-Ponty, as Husserl describes it, the reduction takes the form of an infinite task that cannot be completed. 88 He indicates, but does not further develop, the consequences of his view in his lecture on "The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences." 8 9 In a thoroughly Hegelian spirit, he here restricts truth claims to the historical moment. Gadamer works out some of the hermeneutical implications of Heidegger's position. According to Gadamer, historical understanding is based on the effectivity of history in the production of conscious awareness {wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewufitsein). Since all understanding is influenced by tradition, it is never without prejudice 9 0 As reason is always historical, so-called absolute understanding, a doctrine he mistakenly attributes to Hegel, is impossible. 91 Since understanding always takes place on the basis of the tradition, the past and the present fuse (Horizontverschmelzung) in providing the appropriate perspective. 92 Husserlian foundationalism is a modern form of Platonic realism, intended to grasp reality This canonical task is abandoned by his successors. Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer make weaker interpretive claims to know, which are transformed into epistemological skepticism in Derrida and the French postmodernists. In contending that reason is historical, Gadamer suggests that the interpretive process is literally endless. From the Husserlian perspective, in which to know requires the direct presuppositionless grasp of what is present to the phenomenological gaze, the introduction of the unending strife of interpretation is merely a form of skepticism. This skeptical inference is clearly drawn by Derrida.

In Being and Time, Heidegger calls attention to the link between being and presence. Beings are grasped through different forms of presence, such as the present time. 93 The idea of truth as disclosure points in the direction of an ontological semantics, or theory of ontological reference, that Heidegger never develops. In his many writings, Derrida relies on a kind of ontological antisemantics, or a theory of the failure of ontological reference. His unavowed skepticism is an antifoundationalist consequence of the extension of the antifoundationalist dimension of Heidegger's thought. Derrida's position developed in the context of recent French philosophy, which from the 1930s until the rise of Heidegger as the French master thinker after World War II, was dominated by Kojeve's reading of Hegel. 94 In the analysis of sense certainty that opens the Phenomenology, Hegel maintains in effect that since language is intrinsically general or universal, you cannot say what you mean and you cannot mean what you say with respect to individual things. Derrida generalizes this claim in an effort to deny definite reference of any kind. His argument is initially expounded in an attack on Husserl in a form strongly influenced by the work of the French philosopher of science Jean Cavailles 95 According to Derrida, Husserl's position, which attempts simultaneously to come to grips with lived experience, or the life-world, and provide an absolute beginning, cannot serve as a transcendental foundation for the life-world. Husserlian foundationalism depends on a demonstration of ultimate genesis, the impossibility of which is shown by Derrida 96 The problem he discerns in Husserl is fatal to philosophy in all its forms. Since the dialectical theme resonating through the tradition from Platonism to Hegel can supposedly only be renewed through Husserl, 97 the entire enterprise is fatally compromised. The main theme of Derrida's entire corpus arguably lies in his prolonged effort to work out the implications of this single crucial point. A failure to secure the origins of thinking, the objection he brings against Husserl, is analogous to the failure of foundationalism. This conclusion is clearly drawn by such recent French postmodernist philosophers as Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari. Like Derrida, the postmoderns are all neoskeptics. Like Rorty, they illustrate a variant of skepticism, based on the prior acceptance of a Cartesian foundationalist model that consists of denying knowledge in the absence of an epistemological foundation. One way to put the point is to say that in

different ways all are committed to a Cartesian epistemological vision. Lyotard denies any overarching form of justification, what he calls a meta-recit.98 Deleuze, who distinguishes between a foundation (fondation) that comes from the earth and an epistemological foundation (fondement) that comes from the heavens, 99 refuses all philosophical foundations, which he regards as the only possible form of philosophical legitimation. With Guattari, he proposes the concept of a rhizome implying horizontal links between heterogeneous things, all of which are on the same level, where, in the absence of all vertical links, none can found, ground, legitimate, or justify another. 100 Rorty, Derrida, and the French postmodernists are all disappointed Cartesians, committed to this epistemological strategy but dismayed by the failure to demonstrate its claims. In different ways, each insists on the need to put knowledge on an indefeasible quasi-Cartesian foundation while contending that there can be none. If foundationalism could carry out its aims, postmodernism would have nothing to say, since the entire foundationalist enterprise is linked to the manifest failure of Cartesian or other forms of epistemological foundationalism. Like Descartes, foundationalists view the philosophical task as locating a secure place, a postskeptical epistemological haven in order to escape from change in providing atemporal knowledge of the real beyond the flux. Postmodernists, who offer a different, less-flattering image, describe philosophy as no more than a contingent process, condemned, as Deleuze and Guattari say,101 to repeat and to reinvent itself ceaselessly but always with other givens. For a postmodernist, for whom description replaces deduction, epistemology gives way to hermeneutics. Yet since interpretation is endless, it is, as Rorty notes, never assured of being able to represent the real or avoid skepticism. 102 NOTES 1. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, translated by Elizabeth S. Hal-

dane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:86. 2. See Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques, edited by F. Alquie, 3 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1963), I:603n2. 3. See Jaako Hintikka. "Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?" in Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Willis Doney (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), 108-39.

4. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 11:41. 5. See Principles of Philosophy, I,10, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:222. 6. For a series of passages that lead to this conclusion, see Bernard Williams, in Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (New York: Penguin, 1978), 89. See also Rene Descartes, Discours de la methode: texte et commentaire, edited by Etienne Gilson (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 294. 7. Hegel follows Hotho in rejecting the idea that this follows from a syllogism. See G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, translated by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §64:113. 8. See "Reply to Objections II," in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 11:38. 9. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 357, p. 388. 10. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 765, pp. 642-43. 11. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 197, p. 283. 12. See G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), bk. 4, chap. 9. 13. See his famous remark at the end of Charles W. Hendel, ed., An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 173. 14. The problem of Euclid's axiom of parallels attracted attention for many years. J. H. Lambert, a mathematician friend of Kant, studied the idea of nonEuclidean geometry in his book Theory of Parallel Lines, which was written in 1766 and published in 1786. Lambert was an opponent of non-Euclidean geometry. See Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 81. 15. See Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, translated by J. L. Austin (New York: Harper and Row, 1950). 16. See Bertrand Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (New York: Dover, 1956); and Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics (New York: Norton, 1964). 17. See Hans Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time, translated by Maria Reichenbach and John Freund (New York: Dover, 1957). 18. See Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), 113-14. 19. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 106, pp. 212-13. 20. See Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (New York: Dover, 1956), 271-72. 21. See Lewis, Mind and the World Order, 233. 22. See Kant, Prolegomena, 70. 23. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 116, pp. 219-20. 24. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 127, pp. 225-26. 25. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 98, p. 228. 26. See Kant, Prolegomena, 8. 27. "The deduction is the exposition [Darstellung] of the pure concepts of the understanding, and therewith of all theoretical a priori knowledge, as principles

of the possibility of experience." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 168, pp. 265-66. 28. Detailed study of the Kantian deductions has routinely accorded proportionately more attention to the transcendental deduction. For discussion of the transcendental and metaphysical deductions, see chapter 3: "The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" (66-132) and chapter 4: "The Individual Categories and Their Proofs" (176-99), in A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932). See also "De la deduction des concepts purs de l'entendement," in H. J. de Vleeschauwer, La Deduction transcendentale dans I'oeuvre de Kant (Antwerp: De Sekkel, 1934), 11:143-91. 29. See G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, translated by H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 80. 30. See Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, §42:84. 31. See Stephan Korner, Categorical Frameworks (Oxford: Blackwells, 1970). 32. See Aristotle, Meta., Gamma, 3, 1005 b 19-20. 33. See Aristotle, Meta., Gamma, 7,1011b-1012al0. 34. See Joseph Margolis, The Truth about Relativism (Oxford: Blackwells, 1991). 35. See Aristotle, Post. Ana., I, 4, 73 a 24. 36. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:8. 37. See "Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundsatze der metaphysischen Erkenntnis)," in Kant-Werke, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1960), 1:407-508. 38. Cited in A. Diemer, ed., System und Klassifikation in Wissenschaft und Dokumentation (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hein, 1968), 164. 39. See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, translated by James Ellington (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1984), 5. 40. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xliv, pp. 123-24. 41. See Tom Rockmore, Hegel's Circular Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 42. See Philosophischer Briefivechsel nebst einem demselben vorangeschickten Manifest, in Salomon Maimon, Gesammelte Werke, edited by Valerio Verra (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 4:204-205. 43. See Kant's letter to Herz, May 26,1789, in Kant: Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99, edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 150-56. 44. See K. L. Reinhold, Qber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1978). 45. Maimon, Philosophischer Briefivechsel, 202. 46. "Prinzipien an sich brauchen und konnen nicht bewiesen werden. Denn eben darum sind sie Principien, weil alles in einer Wissenschaft sich aus ihnen (auf sie zuruckfiihren) lasst, sie aber sich aus nichts beweisen lassen, sondern an sich evident sind. Wohll aber konnen und miissen Prinzipien als Prinzipien, d. h. in Ansehung

ihres Gebrauchs, bewiesen werden." Maimon, Philosophischer Briefioechsel, 224. 47. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 765, pp. 642-43. 48. See Lewis, Mind and the World Order, esp. chapter 8: "The Nature of the A Priori and the Pragmatic Element in Knowledge," 230-73. 40. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 803, pp. 661-62. 50. For an important discussion of the status of geometry, see Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time. 51. See Maimon, Philosophischer Briefivechsel, 224. 52. See "Discourse on Method," part 6, in Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:129. 53. See "Discourse on Method," 121. 54. See Hegel's letter to Schelling, April 16,1795, in Hegel: The Letters, translated by Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler, commentary by Clark Butler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 35-36. 55. See Aristotle, Post. Ana., I, 3, 72 b 25ff. 56. See Rockmore, Hegel's Circular Epistemology, 34-35, 39-43. 57. "Our first task is to discover the primordial, absolutely unconditioned first principle of all human knowledge. This can be neither proved nor defined, if it is to be an absolutely primary principle." J. G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, with the First and Second Introductions, edited and translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 93. 58. See Hegel's letter to Cousin, dated July 1,1827, in Hegel: The Letters, 640. 59. A recent discussion considers Hegel to be rejecting foundationalism as Rorty understands it, although no one in Hegel's period understood foundationalism from that perspective. See William Maker, Philosophy without Foundations: Rethinking Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), esp. 1-21. 60. See Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 61. Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, 174-95. 62. "As objective totality knowledge founds itself more effectively the more it grows, and its parts are only founded simultaneously with this whole of cognitions. Center and circle are so connected with each other that the first beginning of the circle is already a connection with the center, and the center is not completely a center unless the whole circle, with all of its connections, is completed: a whole that is as little in need of a particular handle to attach the founding to as the earth is in need of a particular handle to attach the force to that guides it around the sun and at the same time sustains it in the whole living manifold of its shapes." Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, 180. 63. See Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, §1:24-25. 64. See Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, §15:39. 65. See "Spirit," in G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.

V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 263-409. 66. See G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, translated with notes by T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 11. 67. Allison is an exception. See Henry E. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 68. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman K. Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1961), B 275, pp. 326-27. 69. See Rudolf Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language," in A. J. Ayer, Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959), 60-82. 70. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1963), proposition 6.53. 71. See "Proof of An External World," in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 144. 72. See Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 73. See Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §215: "[T]he idea of 'agreement with reality' does not have any clear application" (29). 74. See Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §110: "As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition; it is an ungrounded way of acting" (17). 75. See Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §256: "[A] language game does change with time" (34). 76. See "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (Atascadero: Ridgeview, 1991), 169. 77. The term "antifoundationalism" was allegedly popularized by Rorty. See Evan Simpson, ed., Antifoundationalism and Practical Reasoning: Conversations between Hermeneutics and Analysis (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1987), 1. 78. According to Husserl, otherwise "alles vernunftige Wahrheitsstreben, alles Behaupten und Begrunden" must be given up. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1968), 1:143. 79. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier, 1962), §43:122-24. 80. Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, 166. 81. See "The Overcoming of the Epistemological Problem through Phenomenological Research," in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, translated by Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Crossroad, 1968), 214-34. 82. See Charles Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983). 83. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie

and Edward Robinson (Evanston: Harper and Row, 1962), 62. 84. See Heidegger, Being and Time, §44:256-73. 85. "To say that an assertion 'is true' signifies that it uncovers the entity as it is in itself." Heidegger, Being and Time, 261. 86. "Any mere pre-predicative seeing of the ready-to-hand," his term for the immediate given, "is, in itself, something which already understands and interprets." Heidegger, Being and Time, 189. 87. "An interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us." Heidegger, Being and Time, 191-92. 88. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), viii. 89. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, translated by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 21-42. 90. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 324. 91. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 245. 92. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 258. 93. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 47. 94. See Vincent Descombes, Le Meme et Vautre: quarante-cinq ans de philosophic frangaise (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979). 95. Relying in part on an argument borrowed from Cavailles, a French philosopher of mathematics, Derrida contends that, as he later puts it in difficult language, there is a fatal flaw, more precisely "an originary complication of the origins, an initial contamination of the simple, an inaugural separation [ecart] that no analysis is able to present, to render present in its phenomenon, or to reduce to the self-identical instantaneous punctuality of the element." Jacques Derrida, Le probleme de la genese dans la philosophie de Husserl (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1990), vi-vii. 96. See Derrida, Le probleme de la genese dans la philosophie de Husserl, 6. 97. See Derrida, Le probleme de la genese dans la philosophie de Husserl, 7. 98. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979). 99. See Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: PUF, 1972), 108. 100. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrenic. Mille plateaux (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980). 101. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1991), 94. 102. See Tom Rockmore, "Gadamer, Rorty, and Epistemology as Hermeneutics," Laval philosophique et theologique 53, no. 1 (1997): 119-30.

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Foundationalism as Representationalism

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nlike Greek intuition of reality or classical British empiricism, Cartesian foundationalism is a strategy for knowledge based on representation, more precisely a "warranted" inference from an idea in the mind taken as a "correct" representation of an external object to the object as represented. This chapter will examine the "narrow" question of the relation between the representation and what is represented. The term "representationalism" is adapted from Kant's concern in the famous letter to Herz with the ground of the relation of the "representation" (Vorstellung) to the object. By "representationalism" I mean a theory of knowledge that relies on a relation between a representation of the real and the real. For a representationalist, the problem of knowledge consists of providing an account of that relation. Epistemological battles have often been waged in the conceptual space between appearance and reality. The ancient Greek theory of knowledge features claims to surpass mere appearance through bringing the mind in direct touch with reality. In practice, these claims were refuted by skeptical counterclaims intended to deny the existence of any criterion in order to permit a successful choice among competing appearances to correctly depict a common real external world as it is. Descartes introduced hyperbolic doubt, which undermines the simple, but also simplistic, Greek realist claim to know what is as it is in doubting even the existence of the external world. Since Descartes, the modern philosopher is confronted with the arguably insuperable

problem of how a representation, which offers the only access to the mind-independent external world, relates to it. In other words, under what conditions is a valid inference possible from the representation to what is represented? Kant's description of the problem of knowledge as the relation of the representation to the object clearly delineates the main problem confronting Descartes and later writers committed to nonempirical forms of foundationalism. Not only philosophers but also working scientists often claim that science uncovers the way the world is as it is. Quantum physicist Stephen Weinberg claims that unless we are getting closer and closer to a grasp of the way things really are—in short, unless we are engaged in an activity that in fact "discovers" mind-independent reality—science will turn out to be an irrational activity. 1 This claim is naive, an expression of epistemological faith, since no known argument justifies the epistemological conviction, widespread at least since the ancient Greeks, that we know the real as it is. Hence, there is no way to know, as Kuhn points out, that as our inquiry into the world and ourselves proceeds, we are getting closer to knowing the real. 2 In part, this inference was already drawn in Greek philosophy. In criticizing art and literature as substituting imitations of imitations for a failure to grasp reality, the Republic argues that no road leads from appearance to the real. But it also suggests that under the right circumstances, certain exceptional individuals can directly intuit reality In disagreement with Plato, a number of modern foundationalists, such as Descartes and Kant, hold that under appropriate conditions, representations correctly represent. Their positions, which are crucial in modern philosophy as well as central for any effort to develop modern foundationalism, require discussion in some detail. This chapter argues that representations stand for (or symbolize) an unknown real that we can never claim to know as it is. 3 Although there is no reason to doubt the existence of reality, there is also no way to show that we in fact know it.4 Since we do not know that representations represent, we also do not know that foundationalism provides knowledge about the world as it is. 5 Representationalism reaches a peak in Kant where, as Cassirer notes, a concept no longer functions as a mere copy of the external world. 6 After Kant, and certainly after Hegel, there is no longer any reason to defend representationalism.

A NOTE ON REPRESENTATIONALISM AND REALISM It will be useful, before going further, to clarify the relation between a representationalist approach to knowledge and realism. Modern foundationalism consists of a series of reactions to Descartes' pioneer effort at the dawn of the modern era to formulate a foundationalist theory of knowledge along causal lines. The problem, which is very complex and to which we will return below, requires a proof of the existence of a mind-independent external world that influences what can be known and is known by the cognitive subject. According to Descartes, the world causes ideas, or images in the mind, that correspond more or less well to the world, and there is a reliable procedure to identify which ideas correspond to the world. Correct application of this procedure yields a grasp of the world as it is. Cartesian-style foundationalism, which bases claims to truth and knowledge on a causal theory of perception or a causal relation between the mind-independent external world and what is given to mind, falls under the heading of what is now called representative realism. Representative realism, also called indirect or dualist realism, is usually understood in contrast to direct, or naive, realism. Representative realists and direct realists differ with respect to the perception of objects. 7 In representative realism, perception is indirect, mediated by conscious or unconscious inference. Representative realists argue against direct perception of external objects in favor of direct perception of the effects these objects have on us. Direct realists argue that we directly perceive independent external objects. Representative realists typically talk about illusions and hallucinations. Direct, or naive, realists deny any awareness of such proposed mental intermediates as sense-data. Direct realism is illustrated in theories of direct perception, for instance in Thomas Reid's commonsense realism, in some versions of G. E. Moore's commonsensism, in Ayer's sense-datum theory,8 in reaction to Ayer in Austin's materialism, 9 in Bernard William's absolute conception of the world, 10 in Davidson's externalist form of scientism 11 and in Putnam's natural realism. 12 Representative realism is widespread in modern philosophy, in Descartes, in Kant, in Putnam in his internal realist phase, and in many others. Representationalism is at least as old as the Platonic theory of ideas. The verb "to represent" means "to present or to picture to the mind, to

present an image of; to portray; to depict; to present in words; to be a sign for; and so on." Representation, which is understood in different ways, is a central theme in many fields, from linguistics 13 to politics to mathematics 14 to natural science, but it is especially relevant in aesthetics. 15 Representationalism is neutral with respect to realism. Some representationalists are realists about perceptions of the external world, and some, for instance Plato in some of his writings, are clearly not realists about the external world, or at least not in any usual sense. As concerns knowledge, "representation," which can be understood in different ways, 16 invariably refers to a distinction between what is directly given and what (since it is given only through what is directly given) is given only indirectly. The literature on representation is extensive. Auerbach usefully traces the Platonic view of art as essentially mimetic throughout Western literature. 17 Following Hegel, Gombrich regards the artistic concern with so-called convincing representation as culturally embedded, hence as historically variable. 18 Contra Gombrich, Goodman argues that works of art denote or exemplify but do not necessarily represent. 19 In agreement with Goodman, Wartofsky claims that representation not only does not require resemblance, or a likeness, but that it is "constructed." 2 0 According to Judowitz, who is mainly interested in Descartes, "representation" means "presentation, image, or rendering." 21 For Watson, who casts a wider net, ubiquitous isomorphism, or any degree of likeness, underlies representation. 22 Representation is always representation of something else. The Cartesian view of the scientific object banishes sensation in favor of geometrical schematism, 23 which also holds in Newtonian mechanics. It later gives way to field theory, in which (when things are replaced by an aggregate of physical relations) representation takes the form of a purely symbolic relation. In the latter case, complex mathematical relations refer to or symbolize, but no longer represent, an aggregate of properties as distinguished from things. In the standard, or Copenhagen, interpretation of quantum mechanics, the so-called measurement problem suggests that the very idea of an independent object must be abandoned. 24 Yet at a time when epistemological representation has lost its importance in science, it still remains central in philosophy. Plato and Aristotle divide sharply on the interest of representation, which the former denies and the latter affirms. In the Republic, Plato

takes a mimetic view of art as simple narrative and imitation (373D) and of artists as imitators (mimetai, 373B). Representation fails, since imitators offer only an imitation of an image that is twice removed from reality (597D), hence from truth or knowledge. For Aristotle, sounds are symbols and affections of the soul that are the likenesses of actual things. Writing and speech, which differ from group to group, presuppose similar perceptions that are the same for everyone everywhere. 25 Aristotle's view of perception as representation is widely influential in the later tradition. For Zeno of Citium, the senses give rise to representations (his term is phantasia) in the soul that properly represent the object. According to Cicero, representation is an impression reproducing that from which it comes and cannot manifest that from which it does not come. Locke asserts a later version of this theory in his view of simple ideas as necessarily true about the independent external world. In response to Locke, Berkeley denies that we can ever know how our ideas resemble the objects independent of them. He further maintains that as soon as we distinguish between things and ideas, we land in skepticism. 26 In the Monadology, on the basis of his conception of a preestablished harmony, Leibniz maintains that each monad represents, or mirrors, the whole universe. 27 In "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger attacks a representational theory of perception, which he associates with Descartes. 28 In his deconstruction of definite reference, Derrida attacks representationalism of all kinds.

CARTESIAN IDEAS AS REPRESENTATIONAL In modern times, the representational approach to knowledge is exemplified by Descartes and Kant, whose positions I now consider in more detail. Descartes expounds his theories differently in successive writings, succinctly in the Discourse on Method, at greater length in the Meditations and the Principles. Following Montaigne, Descartes' main concern can be formulated as a question: What do I know? (Que saisje?). His analysis contains two moments, including a "retreat" followed by an "advance." Like Montaigne and, more distantly, Augustine, 29 Descartes "retreats" into himself in order to prove his own existence by appealing to supposedly indubitable self-knowledge that is able to overcome even the most radical form of doubt. In the next

step, he invokes self-knowledge as the basis of his claim to knowledge of independent external things. On this basis he "advances" from knowledge of the contents of his mind to knowledge of things external to it in analyzing the nature of human being, proofs for the existence of God and truth and error, and the existence of independent material things. Descartes' familiar argument runs through a series of stages, including proof of his own existence; through proof of God's existence; then through the inference that, since God is no deceiver, clear and distinct ideas are necessarily true; and finally to the proof of material things. The proof of his own existence consists merely in the observation, in itself the converse of Augustine's prior observation that selfawareness requires that one exist, that one cannot rationally deny one's own existence. Descartes, who desires knowledge of the external world, cannot rest his case with self-knowledge that does not permit him to answer the question of what he knows before knowing that his mind is a reliable source of knowledge. To show the reliability of our intellectual faculties, Descartes proves the existence of God and examines the source of error in the misuse of our rational faculties. He points out that we have various kinds of thoughts, including mathematical claims and ideas that are neither innate nor formed by himself but that are adventitious 30 and that are defined as "images of the [external] things." 31 It is often noted that Descartes uses the term "idea" inconsistently to refer to an operation or act and to its content. 32 In the preface to the Meditations, he responds to the objection that an idea I have might be more perfect than me. He answers that the term "idea," which is "equivocal," can be taken either "materially, as an act of my understanding" or "it may be taken objectively, as the thing which is represented by this act." 33 Watson, who considers Descartes to be the father of representationalism, 34 argues that the latter consistently conflates image and concept, as in the discussion of the two ideas of the sun in the third meditation, in which one is acquired from the senses and the other through astronomical reasoning. 35 This type of objection was already raised before the book was in print. In the Third Set of Objections, Hobbes complains that we could not have more than one idea of the sun at a time and that Descartes conflates idea and rational inference. 36 The evidence is equivocal—there are passages in which Descartes denies that ideas represent objects. 37 Watson contends that despite

Descartes' denial, his ideas represent independent objects by resembling them. 38 He argues that Descartes fails to show how nonresembling representation is possible. 39 Certainly there are many passages in which Descartes insists that ideas resemble the things of which they are the ideas. In the Third Meditation, he relies on resemblance in claiming that some of my thoughts are, as it were, the images of things, which in turn supposes a correspondence notion of truth. 40 In a letter to Gibieuf, he denies that he can know things other than through ideas in the mind before, adding "I also think that everything which is in these ideas is necessarily also in the things." 41 Descartes' contemporaries understood him to be claiming that ideas resemble their objects. For Simon Foucher, Descartes maintains that clear and distinct ideas represent things external to us 42

DESCARTES' REPRESENTATIVE, CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION The usual understanding of Descartes' conception of ideas, which finds a good deal of support in his writings, commits him to a representative and causal theory of perception in which external things are causes of which ideas in the mind are effects. Knowledge of external things requires a "backward" inference from an idea, considered as an effect, to an external thing, considered as the cause. Descartes validates his contention that clear and distinct ideas are true about external things through his conception of God's nature, whose existence he proves through arguments based on causality. Both arguments rely on a traditional, premodern conception of causality that is influenced by scholastic models. Descartes was well versed in the new science, which was in the process of emerging during his lifetime and to which he contributed. But his views of science, including his views of causality, remained close to earlier scholasticism 43 He rejects the idea of a final cause. Yet a careful reading of his writings finds a distinction between two types of efficient causes: a cause of becoming and a cause of being. 44 For Descartes, God functions as the conservator and as the direct cause of motion. In other words, Descartes supposes a distinction between universal and primary cause versus particular cause. 45 His main proof for the existence of God is based on the dubious claim—which is correct with respect to the conservation of momentum

in physical theory but not for causality in general—that the effect cannot be greater than the cause since "there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect." 46 This point depends on the distinction between the idea of God taken as an effect and as its possible cause. Although ideas can be caused by other ideas, there must be a first idea. If I am not the cause of this idea, then there is another being who is its cause. If there is an idea of God, then I, as a finite being, cannot have caused it. In sum, if I have an idea of God (and I have this idea) and if I cannot be the cause of such an idea (and I am not, since I cannot be), then God exists. Descartes anticipates specific criticisms of his proof, including claims that he might have formed the idea of God himself, that the supposedly divine qualities might exist in several different subjects, and that the entire argument is circular. In response to the first objection, he notes that his view of causality implies that a finite human being cannot produce an infinite idea, since in that case the effect would be greater than the cause. This observation presupposes his nonstandard view of causality. Equally obvious, a contemporary reading of causality as efficient causality, in which all claims for proportionality between effect and cause disappear, would destroy this proof entirely. An invariant connection between cause and effect is insufficient to develop the argument, which relies on a proportionality between them so that a specific effect points toward a specific cause. Obviously, this argument could not be made at all in terms of the statistical reinterpretation of causality favored by quantum mechanics. In response to the second objection, Descartes maintains that his ideas concerning God cannot be drawn from several sources without violating his conception of God as an inseparable unity 4 7 Yet it is not obvious why God's nature must correspond to my idea of God. His most important proof of God's existence is based on the idea of God as "very clear and distinct." 48 This proof, which is required to validate his suspicion that such ideas are true, is clearly circular. Descartes' answer to this criticism, in his replies to objections, 49 presupposes a distinction between clear and distinct ideas and their validation through God. He cannot rely on the validity of such ideas before proving God's existence, which, as he points out, alone permits the inference that such ideas are true. 50 Yet he cannot prove God's existence if his idea of God is not clear and distinct. For according to his first rule, an idea that is not clear and distinct is not acceptable, hence not able to figure in a proof of God's existence.

This proof as well as another advanced in the Fifth Meditation in the claim that I cannot conceive God without existence 51 are merely variations on Anselm's famous ontological proof. The list of divine traits Descartes enumerates, such as all-knowing, all-powerful, and so on, are the same as those enumerated by Anselm. There is a further parallel to be observed between the cogito and God. In Cartesian epistemology, the various proofs of God's existence, like proofs of the cogito, enable him to ascribe a particular role to God, which in turn establishes, under certain conditions, the cognitive reliability of the human mind. Descartes' reliance on Anselm as a model is clear from the way he jumps directly to his conclusion. Without argument, he immediately concludes, after establishing God's existence, that God is not a deceiver on the grounds that, as he puts it, fraud and deceit presuppose a defect. 52 This conclusion bolsters his observation, even before he proves God's existence, that there is no reason to think that God deceives us. 53 There is a silent presupposition that a "perfect" God can have no defect. If one further assumes that God is the final source of everything, including my ideas, then ideas indicate the existence of mind-independent external objects if and only if they meet the twin criteria of clarity and distinctness. Since God is not a possible source of error, its source must lie in ourselves, in the injudicious use of our rational faculty, according to Descartes. This violates the rule of accepting nothing precipitously, which is still prey to doubt. The entire Fourth Meditation is devoted to pointing out the need to bring the will under control in order to enable reason. In other words, under proper conditions avoiding precipitation and respecting the need for clarity and distinctness in order to make the necessary determination before committing ourselves to the truth or falsity of any idea. The preceding phases of the discussion require three comments. First, Descartes' contention that God is not a possible source of error is clearly circular. It merely assumes that ideas correctly represent independent external things, although this needs to be demonstrated. It only follows that God is not responsible for perceptual error if God's nature corresponds to my idea; that is, if my ideas correspond to independent external things, including God. Since he has not yet shown this correspondence, Descartes cannot draw this inference with respect to God. In short, Descartes is indeed guilty of the Cartesian circle. Second, Descartes concludes too quickly that since there are errors in judgment, and since God is not a possible source, then the source

must lie in our failure to respect the criteria of careful judgment. Descartes, who understands the subject as a mere thinking thing, is obviously working with a foreshortened conception of human beings. Since human beings, who are not merely rational, are prey not only to the influence of the will on reason but to a variety of other influences, Descartes' model of error from human sources is overly simplistic. Third, his theory is literally founded on the subject, or cogito. Descartes' mistake in adapting his conception of the subject to the needs of the theory can only be rectified by basing the theory on a conception of the subject that more accurately depicts a real human being. Descartes invokes God in order to validate clear and distinct ideas. The proof of God's existence depends on a "reverse" inference from effect to cause, or from my idea of God to God's existence. If he is to use the subject as the foundation for a theory of knowledge, he requires a further inference from the contents of mind to external objects. The difficulty that arises here is exactly parallel to the difficulty in his earlier discussion of God. Earlier he was able to demonstrate God's existence but not to show that God's nature agrees with his idea of God. Now, although he demonstrates the existence of independent external objects, there is no way to infer from an idea of such objects to their nature.

DESCARTES ON KNOWLEDGE OF THE INDEPENDENT EXTERNAL WORLD Descartes proves his own existence and, despite Kant's criticism, the existence of the world. But he neither proves nor even claims to prove that ideas in our mind correctly represent things outside it. In sum, he fails to prove that representations in fact represent. Kant's position later founders on the same epistemological reef. Descartes develops his view of knowledge of the world in the fifth and especially the sixth meditations. In the Fifth Meditation, he considers the essence of independent material objects and again proves God's existence. He studies the existence of independent material things and the distinction between the human soul and the human body in the sixth meditation. The examination of the existence of material things belongs to his effort to emerge from doubt. Mathematical ideas, like the idea of God, are innate. After he has acknowledged

God's existence, Descartes claims to be able to rely on clear and distinct ideas. He can obviously do so with respect to God, whose existence he has proved. He can further rely on mathematical ideas, which he regards as demonstrable a priori, whether or not anything exists outside him. 54 The remaining problem of knowledge, or knowledge of the external world, is formulated as a question: Do material things exist? 55 The result of the fifth meditation is that we have ideas of so-called material things. The insuperable difficulty, which he is unable to resolve, is to justify the inference from ideas to things. 56 Descartes' demonstration invokes two lines of argument, both of which depend on clear and distinct ideas. First, he points out that we have faculties of imagination and feeling that cannot exist apart from us. He concludes that since in my idea of such faculties I find "no intellection," then, "if it be true that they exist, [they] must be attached to some corporeal or extended substance, and not to an intelligent substance." 57 This line of argument, which indicates a link between thinking substance and our faculties, does not demonstrate the existence of independent external things. At most, it demonstrates that the subject is an extended substance at the considerable cost of undercutting Descartes' persistent effort to show that it is merely an unextended thinking substance. Second, from the fact of perception he argues directly for the existence of independent external things in a complex analysis, once again relying on God's allegedly benign nature. Perception, which is passive, is by definition "receiving and recognizing sensible things." 58 If a faculty of forming and producing such ideas did not exist, perception would be useless. This amounts to claiming that perception requires a source of sensation of which it is the result, or a cause of which it is the effect. The source of perception cannot lie in the subject for two reasons. On the one hand, perception does not presuppose thought, by which Descartes presumably means that it is not voluntary; and on the other hand, perception is often against my will. It follows that the source of perception resides in external things, including God. Since God is not a deceiver, and since perception is an effect of an independent external cause, Descartes concludes that "corporeal things exist." 59 Descartes' demonstration of knowledge of the external world comes down to the claim that perception is an effect that points to external

things, which are its cause. Yet proving that external things exist is not the same as proving that our ideas resemble them. In his demonstration, Descartes, who is aware of the difficulty, is reduced to hoping, since God does not deceive us, that ideas of particular things, such as the sun, resemble their sources. This argument proves that material things exist but not that our ideas of things are like the objects they represent. Descartes' representationalist argument fails, since he does not show that our ideas correctly represent reality. It is not possible to make the argument Descartes must make in order to show that ideas resemble things. In effect, he needs to justify a backward inference from effect to cause, more precisely an inference from an idea regarded as an effect to a thing (or the world) regarded as a cause. The difficulty of this line of argument consists of demonstrating a one-to-one relation between effects and causes. In order to develop his claim, Descartes must prove that a single cause cannot possibly yield more than one effect. Yet since the same cause can result in different effects, Descartes cannot establish that ideas represent. We can sum up the results as follows. Descartes' position turns on his claim, stated in the first rule of the Discourse and reiterated in the Fifth Meditation, that only clear and distinct ideas are persuasive. This is the single central point of the whole position. He shows, on the basis of his nonstandard view of causality, that independent external things exist. But he does not show that we know them as they are. He invokes certainty in order to counteract the very possibility of skepticism. He is certain only that he cannot legitimately be certain concerning the link between any idea in the mind and any independent external object. Yet if he cannot link a particular representation to a particular object, then he cannot distinguish, as Hegel points out, 60 between certainty and truth. Cartesian foundationalism does not defeat, but rather succumbs to, skepticism. For different reasons, the same fate befalls Kantian foundationalism as well.

KANT AND DESCARTES Kant and Descartes are rarely discussed together, in part, as noted, because of the many critical things the former says about the latter. Their positions, which differ in many important respects, overlap in a dual commitment to a representational form of foundationalism. Kant, as

already indicated, is committed in different moods both to representationalism and to constructivism. As a representationalist, Kant aims to succeed where Descartes fails, more precisely in understanding the relation of the representation to the object, in a word in overcoming Descartes' problem. There are deep similarities in the two positions following from their shared concern with representationalism. Here are some parallels in the views of Descartes and Kant. —In both theories, the subject is the first, highest, indubitable principle of knowledge. Descartes argues that access to objectivity is based on subjectivity, or the cogito, whose existence cannot be denied. Kant maintains that the transcendental unity of apperception must be able to accompany all objects of experience and knowledge. —In both theories, the subject serves as the foundation of the theory of knowledge. For Descartes, the cogito functions as an unshakeable Archimedean point on which an equally unshakeable theory can be erected. Kant's theory depends on the transcendental unity of apperception, the highest principle of the critical philosophy —In both theories, perception is regarded as an effect for which the mind-independent external world, or the world as it is, is regarded as the cause. —In both theories, perception is relational; for Descartes the clear and distinct ideas and for Kant the phenomena are regarded as representations of an independent external world that is given only indirectly. —In both theories, the problem of knowledge consists of justifying the "backward" inference from the effect to the cause, from the object of experience regarded as a representation to what it represents. For Descartes, the problem consists of grasping the link between clear and distinct ideas and the real, external surrounding world, and for Kant it lies in grasping the link between phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things-in-themselves.

KANTIAN REPRESENTATIONALISM Kant inherits from Descartes the unresolved problem of demonstrating that our representations correctly capture reality—in short, the unresolved and unresolvable difficulty of showing that representations

represent. What for Descartes is a problem of an inference from our ideas to the world is for Kant a problem of knowing noumena, or things-in-themselves, as distinguished from empirical reality, or what is given in experience. Kant does not need to show that we know, say, tables and chairs, since he holds that the conditions of experience and knowledge of objects is the same. But he does need to show that we can go from phenomena, understood as appearances (since it would be absurd to deny that in appearance something appears 61 ), to what appears through appearances; that is, what is now called the mind-independent external world. Kant's conception of representation is not often discussed, even in standard works on representation 62 or in specialized studies of the critical philosophy, which lack even a semblance of agreement about it. 63 Yet representation is clearly central to the vision of the critical philosophy outlined in the famous Herz letter. Kant here says very clearly, in a way that announces the problem that will be central to all his work up to and including the Critique of Pure Reason, which is his mature position, that he is concerned with the problem of representation in writing: "What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call 'representation' [Vorstellung] to the object?" 6 4 As concerns representationalism, the similarity between Descartes and Kant is striking, and for those committed to making out some version of this doctrine, discouraging. Since Kant understands his task as comprehending the relation of representations to independent objects, in this respect his critical philosophy comes down to making out the case for representationalism, the same difficulty whose solution eluded Descartes. Like Descartes, whom he wrongly accuses of denying the existence of the external world, Kant also demonstrates its existence. Again like Descartes, Kant fails to show the relation of representations to independent objects, hence fails to resolve the very problem he poses for the critical philosophy. Kant's argument falls short in precisely the same way as Descartes' in that he fails to show that representations represent, hence fails to demonstrate the relation of representations to the world as it is. Although Kant fails to solve Descartes' problem, he goes farther toward a solution than did his French predecessor. Unlike Descartes, Kant attempts to make representationalism work without recourse to God to guarantee the relation of the representation to reality. His achievement consists of proposing a theory constructed solely from

the perspective of the subject. In this way, Kant avoids the notorious Cartesian circle at the fantastic price, beyond the ability of anyone to pay, of needing to deduce literally everything in order to make out his claims to knowledge. Descartes, who is often thought to innovate by breaking with scholasticism in introducing a conception of independent reason, 65 relies on faith that God, whose existence he proves, in fact corresponds to his idea of God. Kant, who limits knowledge to make room for faith, 66 does not rely on faith at all but on the strength of his arguments. Unlike Descartes, he does not invoke an epistemological deus ex machina to develop his argument through God's supposed benevolence or even through a proof of God's existence, which, he holds, cannot be demonstrated. In the same letter to Herz, he explicitly condemns such reasoning, including the resulting circle, as absurd, thereby rejecting any effort to base human knowledge on God. 67 He breaks more clearly than Descartes with the scholastic view, illustrated, for instance, by Thomas Aquinas's conviction that reason depends on faith. Kant's critical philosophy, like his view of religion, is elaborated wholly and solely within the limits of reason alone. Descartes must prove the existence of an epistemologically benevolent God to justify his claims to know. This huge undertaking appears relatively simple in comparison to Kant's even more demanding approach to the problem of knowledge through reason alone. Descartes needs to justify a "backward" inference from the contents of consciousness to the external world, from what, in Kantian terminology, can without contradiction be considered as the effect to that which can without contradiction be considered as its cause 6 8 Like Descartes, Kant also proceeds from the subject to the independent object. His conception of epistemology as requiring the elucidation of the conditions of the possibility of objects of experience and knowledge amounts to explaining the inference from phenomena to their origin, or more precisely from appearances to what appears. If we take Kant at his word, then the critical philosophy constitutes a triple effort to get clear about the relation of representation to the independent object, to resolve Descartes' problem, and to elaborate an acceptable form of Platonic realism. In his Inaugural Dissertation, Kant introduces a distinction between objects as given in (sensory) perception and as merely thought 6 9 He returns to this distinction in his above-mentioned letter to Herz. 70 Objects can only be given to us if

they in some way affect us. The difficulty is to understand how intellectual representations agree with objects. There are, he maintains, two ways to consider the relation between a representation and what it represents. In contemporary language, one is the standard two-place causal theory of perception, illustrated in the Cartesian position, according to which the independent object is the cause of its intellectual representation in the mind. This approach accounts for the representation as the effect of the independent object, which is considered as its cause. In his letter, Kant rejects this standard two-place causal approach since there is a distinction between the way objects appear and in fact are independent of us. He replaces this standard causal theory with a nonstandard, three-place causal theory that includes a subject, an object, and a representation of the object. According to Kant, the object is given not directly or immediately but only as mediated through the pure concepts of the understanding, or the categories of the mind. Kant clarifies his rejection of the standard causal approach to knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason in a famous but obscure passage on the Copernican turn. Following Hume's attack on causality, it is no longer possible to base perceptual knowledge on experience. Knowledge must be certain; and certain knowledge, which cannot be derived from experience, must be a priori, or the result of an analysis of the conditions of experience. It follows that our concepts do not conform to objects but rather that objects must conform to the concepts of the human mind. In other words, as Kant says in a later passage (where he claims that there are only two possible ways to understand the relation of representations to independent objects, since "the object alone cannot 'make the representation possible'"), it must be "the representation alone which makes the object possible." 71 Kant apparently means that in the same way as any visible object must be seen as having one or more colors visible to the human eye, so any object of experience and knowledge must necessarily correspond to the categories, or concepts, of the understanding. Kant's Copernican turn only partly answers the question concerning the relation between the representation and the object. If the object is the cause of which the representation is the effect, there is no way to infer from the representation to what it represents. It is possible to understand the relation of the representation to the object if and only if the former must necessarily correspond to the latter. But then the object must necessarily correspond to the mind and not the mind to the

object. According to Kant, the only solution is to assume that the subject produces, constructs, or makes its object as a necessary condition of experience and knowledge. 72 This line of reasoning leads to his famous claim, the conceptual heart of his Copernican turn, that we can only know that we know through experience if we "construct" our cognitive objects since "reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own." 7 3 Kant's Copernican turn asserts that we "construct" the objects of experience and knowledge as a condition of knowing them. But it does not explain the further relation between objects of experience and objects of intellection. To say that the objects of experience and knowledge must correspond to the mind if and only if we "construct" them is like saying that any object I see must exhibit one or more of the visible colors. Yet it does not follow that the independent object is any particular visible color. So no inference can be drawn about a relation between what we in fact experience and an independent external object. Kant fails, then, to elucidate the relation of representations to objects and further fails to make good on Platonic realism. Kant is no more able than Descartes to make out a representationalist approach to knowledge of the real. Like Descartes, he falters on the inability to understand the relation between, in his own terminology, objects of perception and of intellection. Kant considers cognitive objects in two ways. One is as mere phenomena given to us as objects of experience and knowledge, such as tables or chairs. The other is as appearances, or objects that point beyond themselves to something else that is not and cannot be given in experience—in Kant's language, a thing-in-itself or things-in-themselves (if this term takes a plural). 74 Since we cannot know mind-independent external objects other than as they appear in our sensory experience, we cannot know reality.75 The thing -in-itself is given, according to Kant, but otherwise inscrutable. 76 The problem, then, is to understand the relation between sensory objects, which are given in perceptual experience, and independent external objects, or things-in-themselves, which in Kant's theory are not and cannot be given in experience. In comparison to Descartes, Kant makes absolutely no progress in explaining the link between representations and what they represent. At most, the discussion in the Fourth Paralogism proves only that external objects exist. The suggested proof of the general possibility of inner experience through outer experience in general in the "Refutation of Idealism"

does not help us to understand the relation of a particular representation to a particular object. If this is Kant's aim, as he states in his letter to Herz, then he fails to reach it either there, elsewhere in the Critique of Pure Reason, or in his later writings. To be sure, Kant surpasses Descartes in providing a wholly secular analysis; in drawing a clearer, stricter distinction between reason and faith; and in avoiding the Cartesian circle. But he is finally no more successful than his French predecessor in relating representations to reality. In fact, he cannot resolve this problem within the constraints of his own theory, since this would be equivalent to knowing the thing-in-itself. The result of the critical philosophy, as Maimon and Hegel stress, is epistemological skepticism. For within the limits of his position, Kant cannot make the "reverse" inference from the appearance to what appears, hence cannot go beyond Descartes. In Kant, foundationalism fails, and if foundationalism is intended to realize Platonic realism, then Platonic realism fails as well. NOTES 1. See Steven Weinberg, "The Revolution that Didn't Happen," The Nezu York Reviezv of Books, October 8, 1998, 48-52. 2. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 170-71. 3. According to Cassirer, starting with Heinrich Hertz, and continuing in Duhem and others, without giving up the traditional concern to know the real, modern science abandons the copy theory of knowledge in favor of a merely symbolic relation of theories to the world. See Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), III:20ff. See also Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, translated by J. M. Krois (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), IV:200n23. 4. Fichte expresses this point well. "According to the Science of Knowledge, then, the ultimate ground of all reality for the self is an original interaction between the self and some other thing outside it, of which nothing can be said, save that it must be utterly opposed to the self." Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (1794), in J. G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 246.

5. See O. Hamelin, Essai sur les elements principaux de la representation

(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1952): "[Representation, contrairement a la signification etymologique du mot, car il faut bien emprunter les mots au sens commun, ne represente pas" (279).

6. See Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 3, The Phenomenology of Knowledge, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 315. See also Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A106, B 133, B 242f. 7. This paragraph follows Frank Jackson's article, "Representative Realism," in A Companion to Epistemology, edited by Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 445-48. 8. See, for example, A. J. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London/New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's, 1969). 9. See J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock (New York: Oxford, 1964). 10. See Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985). See also Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard, 1992), chapter 5, 80-108. 11. Scientism is a typical undercurrent in Davidson's writings. See, for example "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," in Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 183-98. 12. See Hilary Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind," The Journal of Philosophy XCI, no. 9 (September 1994): 445-517. 13. See chapter 2, "Some Notes on the Economy of Derivation and Representation," in Noam Chomsky, The Minimalist Program (Cambridge: MIT, 1995). 14. See Robert Cummins, Meaning and Mental Representation (Cambridge: Bradford Press/MIT, 1989). 15. See Crispin Sartwell, "Representation," in A Companion to Aesthetics, edited by David Cooper (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 364-68. 16. For different senses of "representation" in Kant, see Richard E. Aquila, Representational Mind: A Study of Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 32-35. 17. See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard A. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953). 18. See Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Oxford: Phaidon, 1960). 19. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976). 20. See Marx W. Wartofsky, "Picturing and Representing," in Philosophy Looks at the Arts: Contemporary Readings in Aesthetics, edited by Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 307-18. 21. See Dalia Judowitz, Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), ix. 22. See Richard A. Watson, Representational Ideas from Plato to Patricia Churchland (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), xi. 23. See the fourteenth rule substituting geometrical figures for really extended bodies in "Rules for the Direction of the Mind," in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:54-65.

24. See Alastair Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 48ff. 25. See Aristotle, De Interpretation, 1, 16a4-8. For discussion, see Ronald Polansky and Mark Kuczewski, "Speech and Thought, Symbol and Likeness: Aristotle's De Interpretatione 16a3-9," Apeiron 23 (1990): 51-63. 26. See Principles of Human Knowledge, in George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, and Three Dialogues, edited, with an introduction by, Howard Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), §§85-86, pp. 61-62. 27. See "Monadology," §§62, 63, 78, in Leibniz, Basic Writings, introduction by Paul Janet, translated by George R. Montgomery (La Salle: Open Court, 1957), 265, 268-69. 28. See "The Age of the World Picture," in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated and with an introduction by William Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977), 115-54. 29. Husserl usefully cites the following passage: "Noliforas ire, in te redi, in interiore homini habitat Veritas." Augustine, De vera religione, cited in Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, translated by Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 157. 30. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:160. 31. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:159. 32. Anthony Kenny, "Descartes on Ideas," in Descartes, edited by Willis Doney (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 229. Kenny refers to L. J. Beck, The Metaphysics of Descartes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 152. 33. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:138. 34. See Watson, Representational Ideas, 47. 35. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:161. 36. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 11:70. 37. See "La Dioptrique, " in Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1996), VI-.85, 112. 38. See Watson, Representational Ideas, 19. 39. See Watson, Representational Ideas, 48. 40. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:159. 41. See his letter to P. Gibieuf, 19 janvier 1642, in Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques, 11:905. 42. See Simon Foucher, Critique de la recherche de la verite (Paris: Martin Coustelier; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1969), with a new introduction by Richard A. Watson. 43. See Daniel Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 44. See Descartes' reply to the Fifth Set of Objections, formulated by Gassendi, in Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 11:204-233. 45. See, for example, Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, II, §36:267.

46. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:162. 47. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:169-70. 48. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:166. 49. See the second, fourth, and fifth sets of objections and replies. 50. See the fifth meditation in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:184; Principles, 1:13; Principles, 1:224; and Principles, I, 30, pp. 231-32. 51. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:181. 52. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:171. 53. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:159. 54. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:180. 55. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:185. 56. See The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:187. 57. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:190. 58. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:191. 59. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1:191. 60. For Hegel's reading of Descartes, see G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, edited by Robert F. Brown, translated by R. F. Brown and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 135-50. 61. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxvi-xxvii, 115. 62. Watson, for instance, jumps directly from Locke, Berkeley, and Hume to Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Goodman. See Watson, Representational Ideas. 63. Hoffe and Strawson do not mention this concept. See Otfried Hoffe, Immanuel Kant, translated by Marshall Farrier (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994); see also P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Methuen, 1973). Ewing says that Kant wants to do away with a representative theory of perception. See A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 183. Caygill claims that representation is central to Kant's position. See Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 356. 64. "To Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772," in Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99, translated by Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 71. 65. See G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, edited, with an introduction by, Tom Rockmore, translated by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1996), 449. 66. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx, p. 117. 67. See his letter to Marcus Herz, dated 21 February 1772, in Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 73. 68. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 566, pp. 535-36. 69. See "On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world" (Inaugural Dissertation) in Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy,

1755-1770, translated and edited by David Walford, in collaboration with Rolf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), section 2, §3, p. 384: "Sensibility is the receptivity of a subject in virtue of which it is possible for the subject's own representation to be affected in a definite way by the presence of some object. Intelligence (rationality) is the faculty of a subject in virtue of which it has the power to represent things which cannot by their own quality come before the sense of the subject. The object of sensibility is the sensible; that which contains nothing but what is to be cognized through the intelligence is the intelligible.... In this way, whatever in cognition is sensitive is dependent upon the special character of the subject in so far as the subject is capable of this or that modification in the presence of objects.. .. But whatever cognition is exempt from such subjective conditions relates only to the object. It is thus clear that things which are thought sensitively are representations of things as they appear, while things which are intellectual are representations of things as they are." 70. See his letter to Herz, in Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, Till. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 124-25, pp. 223-24. 72. Kant writes: "But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xvi, p. 110 73. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii, p. 109. 74. In critical philosophy, quantity is a category that applies only to phenomena, not to noumena. 75. In an important passage, Kant writes that "though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must nevertheless be in a position to think them as things in themselves; otherwise, we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearances without anything that appears." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxvii, p. 115. 76. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 642, pp. 574-75.

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On Recent Foundationalism

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pistemological foundationalism, the main modern strategy to realize the traditional claim to know mind-independent reality as it is, remained popular in Kant's wake until increasing awareness of its difficulties slowly but progressively caused it to lose its hold on the debate. Though some continue to strive to develop foundationalism, most recently Swinburne, 1 others, most prominently at present Rorty, regard it as at best a bad approach, in effect a lost cause. Yet a surprising number of writers, including Davidson in some of his moods, T. Nagel, Brandom, Devitt, McDowell, and Nozick continue to make claims for knowledge that could only be justified through some kind of foundationalism. There are at present three main attitudes toward foundationalism and, as a result, toward the Platonic realism it is invoked to demonstrate. Some thinkers (Carnap, Chisholm, Apel, Haack, Swinburne) are still concerned to propose new forms of foundationalism that increasingly diverge from anything resembling a classical modern model. Others (Rorty) have been turning to skepticism on the grounds that foundationalism has failed, which suggests that the theory of knowledge that takes Cartesian realism, hence a Platonic model of realism, as its normative model of what it means to know fails. Still others (Devitt, Davidson, Putnam, Brandom, McDowell) have been retreating from epistemology, which, since Kant, and arguably since Descartes, requires a justification of the claim to know while holding on to various

forms of Platonic realism, not in order to abandon but rather in order to reassert traditional Platonic claims for knowledge. Why not just abandon foundationalism? This simple but radical measure seems an unlikely solution since, as Kant observed, the human mind tends toward closure, the simplest form of which, as Descartes realized, lies in a fixed epistemological point. New forms of foundationalism are likely to continue to emerge as long as the concern with knowledge endures. This chapter selectively reviews some prominent typical examples of foundationalism in our time as well as the emerging turn away from epistemology in recent forms of traditional Platonic realism. I argue that despite the considerable ingenuity and undoubted technical skill of the recent debaters, recent forms of foundationalism are neither plausible nor even more plausible than earlier forms. I further argue that none of the current views of realism makes any progress toward justifying claims to know mind-independent reality as it is.

FOUNDATIONALISM AFTER KANT The tide ran heavily against foundationalism throughout the nineteenth century. The reasons in the critical philosophy that militated against foundationalism include the incoherence of Kantian representationalism; the influence in post-Kantian idealism of Kant's Copernican turn; the revolt against system in Nietzsche; the conviction among the Young Hegelians that philosophy had come to a peak and to an end in Hegel; the wholesale apparent rejection of philosophy in Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche; and the increasing tendency after Hegel's death to distinguish clearly between philosophy and science. This latter distinction was apparently not drawn systematically before the beginning of the nineteenth century. Newton's use of the term "natural philosophy" in the title of Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) still refers to the philosophical study of nature that was widely in vogue prior to the emergence of modern science. The traditional link between philosophy and science persisted through the change in terminology. Kant, who was a Newtonian, uses "philosophy of nature" to refer to the universal science of nature that preceded physics. 2 A century after Newton, when Kant and the post-Kantian German idealists

were active, philosophy and the natural sciences were still considered to be continuous with one another. Yet the growing realization that the special sciences depended not on philosophy but on experience to justify their cognitive claims produced an increasing division between science and philosophy and a turn away from foundationalism of any kind. In Hegel's wake, the tendency toward foundationalism, largely absent in natural science in the nineteenth century, quickly vanished from philosophy as well. Marx, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, the leading "philosophers" of the period, have little in common with foundationalism, however that concept is understood. Nietzsche is an epistemological skeptic whose main cognitive aim lies in the psychological refutation of any claim to know. His opposition to system as reflecting a mistake in judgment is well known. 3 Kierkegaard is uninterested in epistemological matters. Marx provides a historical categorical interpretation of the social world that should not be confused with Marxism. Marxism, which derives from Engels, defends an ahistorical, foundationalist form of empiricism based on the so-called reflection theory of knowledge that has no analogue in Marx's writings. 4 In eclipse throughout most of the nineteenth century, foundationalism reemerged as an important tendency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A logical or quasi-logical form of foundationalism is found in Moore's commonsensism: in Frege, Russell, and Whitehead, who profess different forms of logicism; and in the early Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning. Moore's commonsensism provides another installment in traditional English empiricist claims for direct empirical knowledge of the mind-independent real as it is. Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic and Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica are normally regarded as classical expositions of logicism that, through the proposed reduction of arithmetic to logic, is inherently foundationalist. 5 Frege's foundationalism is manifest in several ways. One is his attempt to show that arithmetic is reducible to logic, since every proposition of arithmetic is in principle derivable from a logical law.6 In the face of Russell's critique, he later gave up logicism in arguing that the foundations of arithmetic are to be sought in geometry. 7 A logical form of foundationalism is pervasive in Russell's views of mathematics, logic, and natural science. In the first edition of his Principles of Mathematics, he depicts it as concerned to prove that all the concepts of pure mathematics can be derived from a small number of

logical principles. 8 In the second edition, he says that he sees no reason, despite intervening progress in mathematical logic, to revise his basic conviction that mathematics and logic are identical. 9 In philosophy of science, he similarly strives through logical atomism to found physics on logic as the method of philosophy 10 while contending that all knowledge is based on direct acquaintance with sense-data. 11 This claim, which follows from his distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, is common to both his and Moore's very different forms of empiricism. Russell's logical reworking of classical empiricism as logical empiricism is generalized in the early Wittgenstein's contention that meaningful sentences possess a logical structure picturing the world. His picture theory of meaning depends on the idea that meaningful sentences are analyzable into simple sentences with the same logical structure as the atomic facts they depict. Objects are simples (2.02),12 and since a proposition has one and only one analysis (3.25), statements about complexes can in all cases be resolved into their constituent elements (2.0201). A picture is a model of reality (2.12), whose pictorial form it displays (2.172) through propositional signs (3.12), which are facts (3.14). Since the propositions of logic represent the world (6.124), logic provides a mirror image of the world (6.13).

THE VIENNA CIRCLE DEBATE ON PROTOCOL PROPOSITIONS The logical approach to classical empiricism reaches a peak in the early Vienna Circle's turn to protocols. In general, the members of the Vienna Circle were committed to scientism, or the view of natural science as the main source of knowledge. They rejected any form of synthetic a priori while desiring to maintain very strong, quasi-Kantian claims for knowledge. They attempted to base science, hence all knowledge of whatever kind, on indefeasible items of experience as a substitute for Kant's a priorism. This effort led to a fascinating, complex debate between Carnap, Neurath, Schlick, and others about a "scientific" form of empiricism in principle adequate to provide a seamless link between observation and scientific law. This project was later rejected in different ways, implicitly through the general analytic critique of classical empiricism and explicitly through critique of the positivist program.

As a group, the Vienna Circle thinkers shared a retreat from a Kantian, a priori approach to a non-Kantian, even partly anti-Kantian, a posteriori approach to knowledge, marking a highly qualified return to classical British empiricism. 13 Like the traditional British empiricists, the Vienna Circle writers held that a priori knowledge is analytic, or logically true, but also empty and nonfactual, since no inference is possible concerning the nature of experience. Hahn, who refused synthetic a priori knowledge, 14 recognized only observation and the tautological transformation of thought. 15 The debate on protocols developed out of the effort to elaborate a general Wittgensteinian distinction between affirmations that can be assigned a meaning through empirical verification and those that cannot. In simplest terms, it opposed Carnap and Schlick to Neurath within the Vienna Circle. A generation later, the debate was reopened in Quine's influential critique of Carnap. Schlick introduces the idea of constatation (Konstatierung), or empirical determination, as the end point of the process of verification. 16 In this early phase of his position, Carnap contends that a word is meaningful if we know its syntax or if we can determine its meaning through other words, as "arthropod" can be understood through "has a segmented body," and so on. 17 In the context of the generally constructivist, phenomenalistic approach worked out in his Aufbau,18 Carnap traces all concepts back to the immediately given, or basic, indivisible units of experience known as elementary experiences (Elementarerlebnisse).19 In a change of terminology, he later calls elementary experiences protocol propositions in order to reconstruct the world. 20 As his position evolves, he replaces his earlier phenomenalistic perspective with a physicalistic one that concentrated on facts (Tatsachen) as opposed to propositions (Satze). The result was a view of science as a system of propositions based on experience that can be verified not in terms of the individual proposition but rather through protocol sentences concerning the entire system. 21 Carnap's view significantly anticipated Quinean holism. Like Wittgenstein, Carnap understands protocol propositions 22 as "propositions that do not require proof [Bewahrung] but rather serve as the basis for all the other propositions of science"; as "the simplest propositions of the protocol language, they are directly related to the given"—that is, to the "immediate contents of experience [Erlebnisinhalte] or phenomena, hence, the simplest cognizable states [die einfachsten erkennbaren Sachverhalte]."23 He assumes that there was no more

than a single correct analysis of the relation between the sign and what it represents. 24 According to Carnap, "the propositions of the protocol language, for instance the (basic) protocol sentences are translatable into the physicalist language" 2 5 of science. If Carnap can identify self-evident, empirical propositions able to serve, in Descartes' terminology, as the unshakeable foundation of science, he will have a valid form of foundationalism. 26 In this context, Wittgenstein and Neurath are among Carnap's strongest critics. Wittgenstein, on whom Carnap relies in his view of protocol sentences, felt he was completely misunderstood. 27 Neurath, who opposes the foundationalism implicit in Wittgenstein and explicit in Carnap and Schlick, objects to the very idea of a protocol as little more than a fiction presupposing an ideal language. According to Neurath, "The fiction of an ideal language constructed of clean atomic sentences is just as metaphysical as the fiction of Laplace's spirit." 28 In this context, he makes the famous remark, which Quine cites in the exergue in Word and Object, about the similarity between a clean protocol sentence and repairing a ship on the open sea. 29 In this way, Neurath objects to the idea of an incorrigible relation between concepts and things as an impossible requirement for scientific theory Long before Quine, he sees that the problem of direct reference has no formal solution; in other words, that the project of semantics as it runs through the entire analytic debate beginning with Frege cannot be carried out. A successful reconstruction of the epistemological ship would presuppose an ideal language allowing no more than a single correct analysis. Neurath prefers a real language that permits an unlimited number of possible analyses, 30 the same point Quine later works out in his theory of the indeterminacy of translation. Carnap, who acknowledges the importance of Neurath's critique, 31 immediately abandons the idea of basing science on incorrigible empirical constations. In giving up empirical foundationalism as anything more than an unrealizable ideal 32 and in adopting a fallback position based on an ideal language, he continues to defend the idea of a rigorous translation from a real to an ideal language. Following Wittgenstein's view of definitions as rules for translation from one language into another, 33 he contends that in an ideal language, unlike a real language, there are precise rules for the translation from protocol propositions. 34 Neurath's attack on Carnap is later continued by Quine, who, in proposing the doctrine of the indeterminacy of trans-

lation and in refuting the distinction between a natural and an ideal language, decisively undercuts Carnap's entire project. 35 Schlick insists that constatations were purely phenomenal. His role in the debate consists of defending a version of Carnap's early view against its later form. In his most direct response to this problem, 36 where he stresses the psychological and physiological aspects of knowledge, 37 he distinguishes between protocols, which always concern perception and are understood as the basis of science, and constatations, understood as determinations of immediate experience, which never concern perceptions. 38 For Schlick, who insists on the need to defend the absolute certainty of knowledge, 39 protocols, which are ideal and need not exist, 40 designate absolutely certain propositions, which precede all science, and on whose basis science could conceivably be erected. 41 Protocols are further incorrigible, since perceptions are incorrigible. 42 It literally could not be the case that immediate experience, such as the observation "Here is yellow," could be falsified if I am using the words in the normal way, since experience is not itself subject to doubt or in any way hypothetical. 43 Schlick's view depends on the distinction between private experience, which he regards as in principle incorrigible, since each proposition that arises in immediate experience is necessarily true, 44 and public experience, which Carnap certainly conflates in running together phenomenal and physicalist language. Neurath denies that phenomenal observations could yield or could ever in principle yield incorrigible physicalist claims. He suggests the term "protocol propositions" to designate experiential reports carefully formulated in physicalistic language that excludes phenomenalistic language. 45 He avoids any hint of foundationalism in suggesting, as Quine would later do, that all scientific claims are subject to correction. "False" in this view means that "a given proposition does not agree with the wider view, and conversely." Any effort to compare a given proposition with the external world must be abandoned. Propositions whose truth cannot be determined are merely illusory propositions (Scheinsatze). In later writings, Carnap continues to defend the general project of the unity of science through various forms of physicalism while abandoning his effort at epistemic foundationalism. Since Carnap's original empirical form of foundationalism is inspired by Russell's logical empiricism, his defeat by Neurath also marks the defeat of the foundationalist form of scientific empiricism. His general agreement in this

respect with Neurath is reflected in a comment by von Mises, a participant in the discussion, in a book originally published in 1939. Von Mises rejects the idea of a system of fixed protocols in favor of the simultaneous growth of language, knowledge, and science. 46 Other members of the Vienna Circle remained committed to scientific foundationalism long after it had been abandoned by Carnap, arguably its most able proponent. It was reintroduced into English philosophy by Ayer, the most faithful English representative in the Circle, in Language, Truth and Logic (1936). Ayer's foundationalist tendency was effectively countered by Austin. In his polemic against Ayer's sense-datum theory, Austin rejected the view that sentences, or propositions, are incorrigible in favor of the view that sentences about material things need to be supported by evidence, stand in need of verification, and cannot be conclusively verified. 47

CHISHOLM'S NONLOGICAL EMPIRICISM Chisholm is mainly uninterested in the scientific, quasi-logical form of empiricism developed by the first generation of analytic thinkers and then redeveloped in the Vienna Circle. Like the later Wittgenstein, he objects to the suggestion presupposed by the early Wittgenstein and the early Carnap of a precise, identifiable link between protocol sentences and facts. Chisholm's position combines classical empiricism with Aristotelian and Augustinian elements in a found ationalist theory featuring self-justifying, unfalsifiable beliefs. In his "Theory of Knowledge in America," Chisholm presents his position against the background of empiricism, commonsensism, and skepticism, three views he obscurely regards as typically American. 48 "Empiricism" refers to the mainline English-language philosophical tradition. "Commonsensism," a term borrowed from Reid and Moore, is roughly the view that claims to know depend on direct experience exempt from justification. If epistemology requires a second-order, or reflexive, claim, then commonsense thinkers are antiepistemologists, concerned merely with sorting out first-order claims, whereas epistemologists examine second-order claims. Skeptics deny the value of examining second-order claims, since there is no way to determine the nature and limits of knowledge. The difference between these three approaches turns on the problem of the criterion, or set of criteria, for knowledge, which for

Chisholm, as for the Greek skeptics, is a central philosophical problem. 49 Unlike the Greek skeptics, Chisholm, who uses "criterion" in different senses, holds that the problem it poses can be resolved on rational grounds. Empiricism, which is intended to resolve the problem of knowledge, turns on the ability to allay doubt of any kind through a criterion of knowledge enabling us to know that, say, "The cat is on the mat" is true; but commonsensism, for which there is no epistemological problem to be resolved, still needs a way of knowing whether in fact the cat is on the mat. The difference between empiricism and commonsensism lies in the nature of the criterion that, for empiricism, is intended to overcome skepticism in theory, which does not arise in practice for a commonsense form of empiricism. Chisholm rejects both the "commonsensist" view that there is no problem of knowledge, for instance as exemplified in Moore on the grounds that we need to justify any claim to know, as well as the skeptical view that there is no way to choose a criterion, or set of criteria, adequate to justify knowledge claims. He rejects as well the familiar dogmatic assurance that sensation is a source of belief, which fails to explain how it is that we know that we know on empirical grounds. 50 For a classical empiricist, such as Locke, the problem of knowledge lies not in justifying the inference from the mental to the physical but rather in justifying the choice among possible beliefs. Chisholm's critique of classical empiricism develops a version of Kant's criticism of prior philosophy as dogmatic. He claims that we can rationally determine a criterion or set of criteria to know that we know according to predetermined standards. He holds that on the basis of evidence, 51 certain beliefs, which are identifiable as self-evident or at least identified by adequate evidence, count as instances of knowing. The problem of knowledge concerns the nature of this evidence, or justification; in short, the nature of justified true belief, which is to be decided through evidence. 52 Since adequate evidence need not itself be evident, the problem of evidence is difficult to analyze. The so-called Gettier problem indicates that available evidence is insufficient to allow a conclusion to be drawn; in other words, it is defectively evident. 53 In holding that certain beliefs are self-justifying, Chisholm reopens the problem, at least as old Plato's Theaetetus,54 concerning justified true belief. Chisholm's solution is a variation on the scholastic form of Aristotelianism, for which the criterion enabling us to justify claims to know and to refute objections lies in an evident proposition. In the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, first principles are "manifest through themselves." 55

Chisholm's form of empirical foundationalism fails because of his inability to provide a satisfying analysis of evident propositions. In contending that we know immediately that we know, 56 he only postpones the problem of the nature of adequate evidence. Remarks on adequate empirical evidence under different headings (such as basic propositions, self-justifying beliefs, axiomatic propositions, and so on) are all variations on the general Aristotelian theme that some selfpresenting propositions do not require or even permit justification on the grounds that a self-presenting proposition "constitutes its own justification." 57 Chisholm offers three main arguments for this claim. To begin with, he asserts that since statements confer evidence upon other statements 58 and since one proposition can be probable on the basis of another 59 in a relation of concurrence, or mutual support, the entire conjunction is beyond reasonable doubt. 60 But according to probability theory, improbable propositions become less, not more, probable when taken together. Second, he introduces the concept of an axiomatic proposition that is necessarily true and believed to be true, hence evident. 61 But Euclid's Fifth Axiom illustrates the point that axioms, which cannot be known to be true, can also be regarded as false. Since a statement that is true is not evidently true, we still do not have a criterion of truth. Third, he interprets what, following Wilfrid Sellars, 62 he called the myth of the given, 63 which many writers regard as a decisive critique of classical empiricism, 64 to support a form of empirical foundationalism. In Chisholm's reading, the myth proposes three theses: first, knowledge is a structured edifice "supported by its foundation"; second, the foundation "consists (at least in part) of the apprehension of what have been called, variously, 'sensations,' 'sense-impressions,' 'appearances,' 'sensa,' 'sense-qualia,' and 'phenomena." 65 The second thesis is a further form of the first. The third, phenomenalistic thesis, which is independent of its predecessors, asserts that "there are no self-justifying statements that are not about appearances." 66 Chisholm rejects rationalist foundationalism, which requires an inference from the appearance to what appears (such as a lucky guess, Reichenbach's probabilism, or Blanshard's coherentism), as well as the Vienna Circle's empirical criterion of meaning. He claims that justified statements, or items of justified true belief, depend on the Augustinian form of Aristotle's idea of self-justifying beliefs and statements. 67 For Augustine, as for Descartes, there is no difference between what appears to

me and what is for me. If, say, wormwood seems to be bitter, then it is indeed bitter for me. According to Chisholm, statements, beliefs, hypotheses, or propositions are self-justifying "if the person's justification for thinking he knows it to be true is simply the fact that it is true," which is equivalent to the claim that "they are neither justified nor unjustified." 68 Yet if there is no way to know that a proposition is true, to say that it is self-justifying if it appears to be true hence is true only revives the wellknown difficulty of how to infer from the appearance to what appears. Chisholm contends that to think about a thing requires us to refer beyond it to something else. 69 But this reduces objectivity to subjectivity and independent reality to mere appearance. His position comes down to the triple claim that (1) there are self-justifying beliefs, (2) our senses sometimes deceive us, and (3) so-called self-justifying beliefs "do not warrant any inferences about the reliability of the senses." 70 In his effort to show that some statements are self-justifying, Chisholm does not demonstrate empirical foundationalism, but rather reawakens the very problem he is concerned to avoid: the problem of the justification of the inference from appearance to reality. Yet in the context of foundationalist approaches to Platonic realism, his failure to demonstrate empiricist foundationalism is useful. For it further undermines such efforts in showing that empiricism does substitute for, but rather rests on, rationalist foundationalism.

KARL-OTTO APEL AND ETHICAL FOUNDATIONALISM With the possible exception of Chisholm, no one has done more recently to make the case for foundationalism than Karl-Otto Apel, who proposes a transcendental form of ethical foundation with Kantian and other overtones. In considering Apel, I also tacitly consider Jiirgen Habermas, who in his long post-Marxist phase is strongly indebted to his German colleague. Kant restates the Greek conviction, later developed by Habermas, 71 that philosophy is the sole source of useful knowledge in contending that human reason is intrinsically concerned with human interests. 72 Kant can be read as suggesting that philosophy contributes to human self-emancipation through reason. In invoking ethical foundationalism, Apel similarly suggests a link between claims for truth and knowledge—a link he regards as intrinsic to discussion of any kind— and social utility.

Apel proposes to transform transcendental philosophy 73 by substituting a plural subject for the traditional supposedly monological subject. 74 He is mainly concerned with two main themes: a reflexive, transcendental-pragmatic foundationalism, which he regarded as necessary for the rational justification of ethics; and the difference between real and merely ideal conditions of communicative ethics, also called discourse ethics. Hans Albert objects that foundational efforts lead to an infinite regress,^or a so-called Miinchhausen's trilemma. 76 In response to Albert, Apel contends that in that case there can be no rationality. The application of general rules to concrete situations through judgment, such as Kantian Urteilskraft or Gadamerian phronesis, is not problematic. The difficulty lies in the possibility of a universalistic communicative ethics. Like Kant, Apel maintains that individuals should act as if they belonged to an ideal speech community. Like Aristotle, he argues that to reject this claim is to become involved in a so-called performative contradiction. Apel calls this approach transcendental pragmatics (Tranzendentalpragmatik) to indicate that it combines transcendental reflection in the Kantian sense and a pragmatic relation to the real world. He uses the term "transcendental hermeneutics" (Transzendentalhermeneutik) to refer to the Heideggerian idea of reflection as grounding reason through a hermeneutical circle. He apparently conflates foundationalism, which is linear and requires a foundation, with interpretation, which is circular and cannot be founded in any of the specific foundationalist epistemological senses According to Habermas, Apel's theoretical breakthrough occurs in an article called "Scientism or Transcendental Hermeneutics?" ("Szientismus oder transzendentale Hermeneutik?" 1969). His later article, "The A Priori of the Communication Society" ("Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft") marks the beginning point for a theory of discourse ethics, which Habermas has also taken up. 77 Apel elaborates his ethical foundationalism in a large number of papers, whose themes and analayses overlap. I take as representative the long article in which this view first appears in 1973: "The A Priori of the Communication Society and the Foundations of Ethics: Concerning the Problem of a Rational Foundation of Ethics in the Scientific Period." 7 8 1 further consider a later restatement that amplifies the original theory Apel's general theme, stated in the subtitle of the article, is that in reflecting on the relation of science and ethics we realize the need to justify a general ethical theory Yet the very idea of an intersubjective

justification is apparently precluded by the prevalence in our scientific age of the scientistic idea of normative neutrality, or value-free "objectivity." 79 His reasoning is based on two points, which Habermas later makes the basis of his own theory of discourse ethics 80 : ethical claims must be universal, not local, and moral judgments require objective validity that has been abandoned in the philosophical retreat from ultimate norms. 81 Apel sees the latter requirement as widely imperiled. Marxism dogmatically asserts that we cannot rationally justify ethical norms and that moral arguments tend to be decided on strictly pragmatic grounds, often by appealing to experts who apply various kinds of rules. 82 It is significant that neither he nor Habermas, who follows Apel's views of ethics closely, takes into account Hegel's dissenting approach. Apel, who is especially concerned with analytic philosophy, regards it as typically opposed to the justification of ethical norms on three grounds. First, following Hume, it denies that normative, or prescriptive, claims can be derived from merely descriptive statements. Second, it contends that since science depends on descriptive statements, a scientific justification of norms is not possible. Third, it maintains that since only science provides objective knowledge, an intersubjective justification of ethics is not possible. 83 Apel responds that the objectivity of value-neutral science cannot even be understood without presupposing the intersubjective validity of moral norms, which demonstrates the possibility of a rational justification of ethics. 84 Agreement in ordinary language is a final limit that represents the ideal anticipation of a normative ideal. 85 The possibility of philosophy requires a distancing of thought from the world through the presupposition of a transcendental language game linked to the analytical critique of moral norms. 86 Not only science but all problems of whatever kind that utilize rational argumentation necessarily presuppose the validity of universal ethical norms. 87 Apel's complex position is fraught with many difficulties. Some have objected that to hold that every justification presupposes logic points to a circular relation between logic and ethics leads to an infinite regress. In response to Popper and especially to Hans Albert, 88 Apel contends that this type of objection is only valid against a deductive form of foundationalism. He links his position to a transcendentalpragmatic subject described in Charles Morris's three-dimensional semiotics. 89 Yet if whatever norms we choose depend on what is

accepted in a given historical moment, then at most Apel has shown that, as Hegel thinks, claims to know are indexed to their historical moment. He has not neither identified nor shown that there are universal presuppositions of real discussion. Though Apel is very well read, he arguably interprets positions on which he draws in an arbitrary manner. In arguing for his view of consensus, he explicitly relies on Peirce. Yet Peirce never claims that the development of consensus over time among scientific investigators 90 demonstrates anything more than agreement acceptable as knowledge. Consensus yields belief, which cannot be assimilated to a truth claim. Apel suggests that all argument of whatever kind presupposes a rational community both really and ideally 91 and that rational agreement is the basis of democratic society. 92 If rational norms were ideally intrinsic to democracy, it would not follow that they can be identified in the concrete situation. In appealing to Peirce in a later restatement of his theory, Apel specifically links it to Cartesian foundationalism 93 According to Apel, all rational justification of any kind whatsoever requires foundationalism as its condition. He contends that Peirce shows an unbreakable link between the objective scientific-technological investigation of nature and the intersubjective possibility of consensus 94 underlying everything we do. This link, which is presupposed by the modern interest in human self-emancipation, is useful in formulating regulative principles of practical and postulated scientific progress. 95 It might be more accurate to say that Peirce, who evinces no interest in human self-emancipation, holds that we can go from doubt to belief through the process of scientific inquiry. Why should consensus yield truth? In his view of consensus as a source of truth, Apel may be relying on Socratic practice. He restates the tacit Socratic assumption that truth and knowledge will result from unconstrained agreement as a claim for potential agreement that in principle provides closure to all rational discussion. Like Socrates and like Habermas, who, following Apel, proposes 96 but wisely later abandons 97 a consensus theory of truth, Apel holds that even potential consensus yields ethical truth relevant to social concerns. Yet consensus, or rational agreement, and truth are obviously unrelated. Consensus, potential or real, would be a reliable indicator of truth only if there were a decision procedure in place to exclude false agreement. The truth claims of, say, mathematics and the natural sciences rest on the application of a decision procedure that is unavail-

able to adjudicate the ethical claims that interest Apel. No one would consider, say, consensus around a political program, as there was around Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s, as indicating something as grand as truth. Apel, who partly relies on Peirce, arguably reads him against the grain. For Apel, truth understood as the postulate of consensus in the logic of the sciences cannot be reached by finite individuals. 98 Yet consensus is only reached in discussion among finite individuals. In fact, this is "bad" Peirce, since it refers to something beyond experience to understand it, whereas Peirce very clearly restricts attention to what is found in experience. 99 In his critique of Descartes, Peirce rejects foundationalism for a pragmatic approach to truth. His position combines fallibilism (or the idea that we can never claim perfect certitude or exactitude, which is clearly inimical to foundationalism as usually understood) 100 and the view of the long run (what we mean by "true" is the opinion we will arrive at in the long run of what we take to be the real). 101 For Peirce, since we can never go beyond the representation of the object to the object, we can never claim that what we take to be knowledge in fact coincides with independent reality. Though he does not make this distinction, it might be more accurate to say that we must make do at any given time with what the relevant community of scientific investigators regards as knowledge. For Peirce, truth is only an ideal limit that is not in fact ever reached. Apel conflates justification (Begrundung) and foundationalism (Letztbegriindung), or knowledge and truth. In ethical matters, where there is no decision procedure, the opinion around which consensus forms can only emerge from unconstrained discussion. Yet consensus is wrongly interpreted as indicating anything more than the articulation of an opinion generally held in a particular group at a particular time. It is wrongly construed as providing an epistemological foundation.

TWO RECENT FORMS OF FOUNDATIONALISM: BONJOUR AND HAACK New forms of foundationalism are still springing up like weeds almost as quickly as others are rooted out. This strategy remains especially in vogue among Husserl scholars. Husserlian phenomenology is often understood as isolating items in experience that resist doubt of all kinds.102

Foundationalism is now less common among analytical thinkers, 103 as in the now-infrequent effort, featured in the early Wittgenstein, 104 to make linguistic philosophy foundational. 105 Though they continue to make cognitive claims apparently requiring foundationalism, there is now less explicit consideration of the nature and conditions of a successful form of foundationalist epistemological strategy In analytic philosophical circles, the most lively current foundationalist trend tends toward so-called moderate foundationalism, as distinguished from the classical Cartesian model, which moderate found a t i o n a l s currently call radical foundationalism. Moderate foundationalism is arguably not foundationalism in more than name. It can be described as the view, which Descartes would find unacceptable, that foundational beliefs need neither possess nor provide certainty and need not deductively support justified nonfoundational beliefs. 106 Accounts of noninferential justification available to moderate foundationalism include self-justification, or the idea that foundational beliefs do not require evidential support, a doctrine already anticipated in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics; justification by nonbelief; nonpropositional experiences, following C. I. Lewis, or the view that foundational perceptual beliefs can be justified by nonbelief sensory or perceptual experiences, such as seeming to see; justification by a nonbelief of reliable origin or through a belief, such as perception, memory, introspection, and so on. Unlike radical foundationalism, which is always indefeasible, moderate foundationalism is typically defeasible. Radical foundationalism insists on transmission from foundational beliefs to inferentially justified nonfoundational beliefs, say through entailment relations. Moderate foundationalism, which gives up the popular Cartesian criterion of unrevisable apodictic claims to know, allows for merely probabilistic inferential connections that transmit justification. Depending on how the term is understood, a list of recent moderate foundationalists might include C. I. Lewis and Davidson, who is sometimes classed among neo-Humean skeptics; 107 among reliabilists Goldman; among representatives of cognitive psychology A. I. Stich and Paul Churchland; and so on. Foundationalism has recently been discussed by Bonjour and Haack. Bonjour criticizes empirical foundationalism in favor of socalled internalist coherentism. Since Hegel, it has often been thought that foundationalism and coherentism exhaust the universe of dis-

course. According to this view, if foundationalism fails, then coherentism is the only recourse. 108 Bonjour represents the presently fashionable analytic view that foundationalism and coherentism are the only alternatives and that foundationalism fails. 109 Haack proposes a form of moderate foundationalism in "foundherentism," whose awkward name reflects a manifest desire to bring together in a single position foundationalism and coherentism, neither of which is acceptable in isolation. Like many analytic authors, she restricts her discussion to analytic foundationalism. Her critiques of a number of important analytic writers are uniformly careful and insightful. But as concerns foundationalism, she fails to break new ground. Moderate analytic foundationalism, which Haack illustrates, generally understands justification through a two-tiered structure in which some instances of knowledge and justification are noninferential and foundational and others are inferential and nonfoundational. 110 Haack understands "foundationalism" to refer to a distinction between basic beliefs and further beliefs, which are derived from those that are basic.111 She distinguishes, to make sense of the very idea of a weak form of foundationalism lacking a cogent rationale, 112 between weak and strong, or infallibist, foundationalism, in which derived beliefs are held to be incorrigible, certain, or infallible. 113 Haack, who maintains that the distinction between foundationalism and coherentism is a false dichotomy, proposes foundherentism as a third alternative, 114 which is neither.115 Her form of the standard complaint against coherentism, 116 which she brings against Bonjour and Davidson, 117 is that the mere fact that beliefs are internally coherent is no guarantee that they refer to anything beyond themselves. Her objection to strong foundationalism is best developed in her discussion of C. I. Lewis. She regards Lewis, who supposedly shifts between weak and strong senses of foundationalism, 118 as anticipating her own defense of weak foundationalism. In criticizing Lewis, Haack's aim is not to refute foundationalism in general but only to show that her own theory is unaffected by the criticisms she brings against strong foundationalism and coherentism. She contends that Lewis's arguments lead to her foundherentism. 119 Even if we grant that the traditional alternative between foundationalism and coherentism is not exhaustive, it still needs to be shown that foundherentism is better than these alternatives. Haack promises

more than she delivers. If foundherentism turned out to be the best approach to knowledge, why should we associate it with foundationalism as this epistemological strategy is usually understood? Haack's answer, which seems unsatisfying, is that since some beliefs are derived and others are basic, foundherentism illustrates so-called modest foundationalism. Yet modest foundationalism is so modest that it scarcely seems worthy of the name foundationalism at all. For in abandoning certainty and the deductive support of justified nonfoundational beliefs, modest foundationalism, which foundherentism exemplifies, keeps the reference to foundationalism while arguably renouncing its defining characteristics. It gives up the central tenet of Platonic realism for which the foundationalist strategy was devised: the claim to know the mind-independent real as it is.

RECENT POSTFOUNDATIONALISM REALISM I end this chapter with some discussion of recent efforts at what I call faute de mieux postfoundationalist realism. Foundationalism is the favored epistemological strategy in modern times to justify forms of the Platonic realist claim to know reality. Postfoundationalism realism makes very similar metaphysical realist claims on the basis of mere assertion or unargued affirmations of knowledge without the benefit of a foundationalist strategy. In effect, postfoundationalist realists return to the epistemological effort to justify claims to know that are widespread in the modern debate on knowledge, but they offer mere affirmation in place of any effort to justify claims to know. The epistemologically unsupported claim to know what is as it is is a constant in the current analytic debate, as several examples will show. An approach to knowledge on the basis of unsupported claims to know is arguably equally frequent in continental and analytic circles. A stunning example is Heidegger's "identification," as part of his analysis of Dasein, of a long list of existentialia, as distinguished from categories, that are arguably true proximally and for the most part of human beings without the slightest effort at justification of any kind. Heidegger's dogmatic claim to know the structure of being in the world is more than matched by the series of unargued affirmations, following Moore's attempted refutation of idealism through direct intuition of the real, to know what is as it is. Devitt's version of traditional Australian realism consists of the normative assertion that truth

and knowledge concern the mind-independent world without any effort to develop this claim. 120 Similarly, Davidson's critique of Quine is in effect a reading of Quine's empiricism without dogmas as a dogmatic form of empiricism. He rejects the holistic form of correspondence featured in Quine in favor of what looks like a traditional metaphysical realist claim that we directly grasp objects in the world. 121 The difficulty of this claim has been noted by McDowell, who in some of his moods is also committed to a form of Platonic realism and who points out that in the absence of external constraints, there is no way to know that our views of the world in fact correspond to it. 122 Putnam, the most important student of realism in our time, 123 has at different times been committed to scientific, then internal, and most recently natural realism. Internal realism, which Putnam has defended over many years, claims that knowledge consists of different interpretations of a single mind-independent external world. 124 What this amounts to is unclear. Putnam suggests that internal realism concerns both the mind-independent world and the world as produced by our concepts. 125 These deliberately Kantian claims are obviously inconsistent. It could not be the case that we know the independent world as it is and that is "constructed" by the knower. Since Putnam cannot show there is a stable external world or that we ever know it as it is, internal realism amounts to nothing more than a mere posit. The same problem persists in his latest position. Under attack by Rorty 126 and under the influence of McDowell's naturalism, as well as James and Austin, Putnam has recently abandoned internal realism in favor of natural realism, his new name for direct realism. 127 In the course of this strategic retreat from Kant to Descartes, he gives up sense-data for the direct experience of external objects that are supposedly picked out in veridical perception. 128 It is refreshing to think that knowledge claims correctly identify a common external world. Yet Putnam merely asserts but does not demonstrate this point, which could only be demonstrated, if it could be demonstrated at all, through an epistemological argument. The latest entrant in the analytic sweepstakes for the prize in Platonic realism in Brandom, who incautiously but clearly affirms in his view of inferentialism that, in his terminology, we can know whether our concepts are correct since we can know how things are with, say, electrons and aromatic compounds. 129 Yet this point need only be conceded if the claim to know the mind-independent world were to be backed up by an argument that neither Brandom nor anyone else has ever provided.

KANT'S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION, REALISM, AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONALISM The main point to take away from this complex debate is that neither foundationalism, the main modern epistemological strategy to justify claims to know the mind-independent real as it is, nor the simple assertion of unjustified claims to know the real is adequate to justify affirmations to know the mind-independent external world as it is. The former fails because a viable version of foundationalism has never and apparently cannot be formulated. The latter fails because metaphysical realist claims to know lack the justification that can only come from an epistemological argument. At present, there seem to be three attitudes in the epistemological debate: a disregard of, even a hostility toward, foundationalism; an interest in and residual concern to construct a viable form of this strategy; and a desire to maintain metaphysical traditional realist claims to know without regard to their justification. Cartesian and other forms of foundationalism attempt to, but finally fail to provide, an epistemological warrant for claims to know, which depends on making out an acceptable form of foundationalism. Contemporary forms of metaphysical realism often retreat behind the epistemological moment typical of the modern tradition in affirming but not legitimating knowledge claims. The result is an increasingly frequent dogmatic commitment to unjustified affirmations of knowledge that has come increasingly to the fore in the absence of any viable way to show that knowledge of independent reality is possible. The difference between a simple affirmation of some variety of Platonic realism and an effort to demonstrate it through epistemological foundationalism is obvious. The former is asserted but not justified, and the latter depends on the formulation of a successful form of foundationalism. I have already conceded there is no way to shut off the formulation of new forms of foundationalism. Yet in noticing the thrust of Kant's position, it is possible to indicate the failure of any future form of foundationalism understood as an effort to develop Platonic realism. Kant's critical philosophy marks a decisive step in the debate on knowledge. One way to put the point is to note that before critical philosophy, it still made sense to affirm without proof claims to know reality as it is. After Kant, the reaffirmation of this type of cognitive

claim constitutes a rejection of his own rejection of any claim to know reality as it is. The proper response is to reaffirm the strength of Kant's decisive critique of any such claim to know mind-independent reality as it is. It will be helpful, in order to grasp the force of Kant's position in opposing Platonic realism, to provide a slightly fuller reading of the critical philosophy than is usually provided. A full reading of Kant's position, which surpasses the scope of the present work, would relate Kant's dual commitment to empirical realism and transcendental idealism within the framework of the critical philosophy. Moore rejected Kant's own refutation of idealism as well his transcendental idealism in the course of rejecting idealism. Since Moore, Kant's analytic readers have tended to favor a foreshortened reading of the critical philosophy. This reading favors Kant's empirical realism while silently dropping his transcendental idealism. Thus, Strawson claims that Kant's analysis of experience leads to the doctrine that experience and knowledge of objects amount to awareness of mind-independent objects in time and space. 130 The empiricist reading of the critical philosophy favored in the analytic debate on Kant has the advantage of avoiding one obvious interpretive problem at the cost of creating others. It is known that Kant stresses transcendental idealism in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason but, in response to contemporary criticism, he stresses empirical realism in the second edition. An empiricist approach to the critical philosophy evades the difficult question of how to relate empirical realism and transcendental idealism at the price of eliminating the latter doctrine. But the obvious price to pay for ignoring Kant's transcendental idealism is that it is no longer possible to grasp his most important epistemological contribution. The main thrust of Kant's epistemological theory consists of what is routinely referred to as the Copernican revolution in philosophy, which is opposed to any form of Platonic realism. Kant's famous claim to know Plato better than he knew himself, 131 which points to his deep Platonism, should not be allowed to obscure the ways in which he is also a deep anti-Platonist, for instance as concerns metaphysical realism. It is true that in some of his moods, most clearly in the famous Herz letter, Kant favors representationalism, hence metaphysical realism. But as concerns his Copernican turn, there is an important difference, indeed a veritable chasm, between Platonic realism, which Kant

rejects, and empirical realism, which he favors. Platonic realism is a claim to know mind-independent reality as it is, the sort of claim that Strawson apparently attributes to Kant and that many contemporary analytic thinkers independently favor for reasons of their own. Empirical realism is the claim that the conditions of experience and knowledge of objects are the same. It is not and should not be construed as asserting knowledge of what is as it is, more precisely a cognitive grasp of mind-independent reality. Kant's commitment to empirical realism emerges as the successor form of realism after the refutation of the forms of Platonic realism extant in his day, most prominently in Descartes and classical British empiricism. Kant refutes Platonic realism on epistemological grounds in his oftenmentioned, but still little-understood Copernican revolution in philosophy Russell, a would-be historian of philosophy, which, apart from Leibniz, he did not know well, is only slightly more aware of the German idealist tradition, which he just as strongly opposes. According to Russell, Kant's Copernican turn means that "propositions may acquire truth by being believed." 132 Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy is the result of his understanding of Copernicus's decisive contribution to the rise of modern science, the theory of science he based on that reading, and the general conception of knowledge he draws out of his theory of science. 133 His central insight is contained in the famous affirmation that "reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own." 1 3 4 This can be stated as the complex claim that there is no way to know what is independent of us, since we can only claim to know what we in some sense "construct." Kant's Copernican revolution undermines Platonic realism in a way that cannot be recovered. Kant's claim can be paraphrased as the idea that we cannot know we know that to which there is no epistemological link. Now if the world is really independent, then there is no epistemological link to it and hence it cannot be known. Since by definition the mind-independent real is independent of the knower, then, like the thing-in-itself, it is uncognizable. This has two immediate consequences. First, it follows that epistemological foundationalism cannot be successful. Second, it further follows that if epistemological foundationalism fails, then there is no convenient way to develop a claim for metaphysical realism. This line of argument stands or falls on the success of Kant's argument that we cannot know what we do not in some sense construct. According to Kant, if to know means that the subject corresponds to

the object, or knowing to the known, then we can give no account of knowledge since we cannot know how we know an independent object. For Kant, it is possible to know that one knows only if, on the contrary, the object corresponds to the subject or knowing corresponds to the knower. This condition is met if and only if the subject in some sense "constructs" what it knows. For our purposes, it is not necessary to work out Kant's constructivist approach to knowledge. Our interest here is confined to the negative result, fatal to any and all efforts to develop Platonic realism, that no account can be given of knowledge of the independent real. If we can only account for knowledge of what we "construct," then we cannot account for knowledge of reality. This suggests that foundationalism of all kinds must fail to uncover what is as it is. The paradoxical result is that Kant, who is in some respects an epistemological foundationalist, also provides a stunning argument against foundationalism of any kind in noting the inability to demonstrate knowledge of mind-independent reality. To put the same point otherwise, we cannot claim to know anything about a putative metaphysical real whose existence we cannot demonstrate but have no reason to doubt. Since, as Kant points out, epistemological foundationalism, which is invoked as a strategy for knowledge of the mind-independent real, fails, after Kant there is no longer any reason to defend foundationalism or to anticipate that at some future time it will finally be formulated in convincing form. And there is also no reason to defend metaphysical realism. NOTES 1. See Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2. See Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §15:42-43. 3. See §26 in "Spruche und Pfeile," in Gotzen-dammerung, in Friedrich Nietzsche-Werke, edited by Karl Schlechta (Frankfurt a. M.: Ullstein, 1972), 111:392. 4. See Tom Rockmore, Marx after Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 5. See, for example, Rudolf Carnap, "Die logistische Grundlegung der Mathematik," in Erkenntnis 2 (1931): 91-105. 6. See Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, translated by J. L. Austin (New York: Harper, 1960), §87, p. 99. 7. See Hans Sluga, Gottlob Frege (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 173.

8. See Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics (New York: Norton, 1964), xv. 9. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, v. 10. See "Logic as the Essence of Philosophy," in Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (New York: New American Library, 1960), 33-54. 11. See "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description," in Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), 202-24. 12. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, German text with a new translation by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, and with an introduction by Bertrand Russell (London/New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul/Humanities, 1963). All references to this book are to Wittgenstein's own numbering system. 13. For a counterclaim that logical positivism was important in offering a new conception of a priori knowledge and its role in empirical knowledge, see Michael Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 14. For an examination of the idea of synthetic a priori knowledge, see Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 197-207. 15. Hans Hahn, "Die Bedeutung der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, insbesondere fur Mathematik und Physik," Erkenntnis 1 (1930/31): 97: "Beobachtung und die tautologischen Umformungen des Denkens, das sind die einzigen Mittel der Erkenntnis, die wir anerkennen. Eine Erkenntnis a priori erkennen wir nicht an, schon deshalb nicht, weil wir sie nirgends bendtigen: wir kennen kein einziges synthetisches Urteil a priori, wiissten auch nicht wie es zustande kommen konnte." 16. "The act of verification, with which the solution finally ends, is always of the same kind: it is the appearance of a defined state of affairs, which is determined [Konstatiert] through observation, through direct experience." M. Schlick, "Die Wende der Philosophie," Erkenntnis 1 (1930): 7. 17. Carnap summarizes his view as follows: "Let 'a' be a word and 'S(a)' an elementary proposition, in which it appears. The adequate and necessary condition for 'a' to be significant can in each of the following formulations be given, which basically describe the same thing: 1. The empirical signs [Kennzeichnen] for 'a' are known. 2. It is determined from which protocol propositions 'S(a)' can be derived. 3. The conditions of truth for 'S(a)' are known. 4. The way leading to the verification of 'S(a)' is known." Carnap, "Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache," Erkenntnis 2 (1931): 224.

18. See, on Carnap's Aufbau, Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), chapter 5, "The System of the Aufbau," 151-88. 19. See Camap, Der logische Aufbau der Welt, §§67-68. 20. See Carnap, Der logische Aufbau der Welt, xi. 21. See Rudolf Carnap, "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft," Erkenntnis 2 (1931): 437: "Wissenschaft ist ein System von Satzen, das an Hand der Erfahrung aufgestellt zvird. Die empirische Nachpriifung bezieht sich aber nicht aufden einzelnen Satz, sondern aufdas System der Satze oder aufein Teilsystem. Die Nachpriifung geschieht an Hand der Protokollsatze/' 22. "Under protocol propositions: we now want to understand basic protocols. The language to which these propositions belong we call 'protocol language.' (It can also be referred to as the language of experience [Erlebnissprache] or 'phenomenal language; less doubtful is the neutral term 'first language.') The question concerning the precise characterization of this language (hence, concerning the precise proposition of its words, formation of propositions, and rules) cannot be answered at the present state of research. It is also not necessary for our further considerations. Nevertheless, we will later be able to clarify the character of protocol propositions." Carnap, "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft," 438. 23. Carnap, "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft," Erkenntnis 2 (1931): 438. 24. See Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.25. 25. Carnap, "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft," 453. 26. For a vigorous denial that logical positivism is foundationalist, see Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism, chapters 3-5. 27. See his letter to Moritz Schlick, dated 8 August 1932, cited in Ludwig Wittgenstein. Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten, edited by M. Nego and M. Ranchetti (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1983): "I cannot imagine that Carnap should have so completely and utterly misunderstood the last sentences of the book—and therefore the fundamental conception of the whole book" (255). I thank Thomas Wallgren for this reference. 28. See Otto Neurath, "Protokollsatze," in Erkenntnis 3 (1932/1933): 204. 29. Neurath, "Protokollsatze," 206. "Es gibt kein Mittel, urn endgiiltig gesicherte saubere Protokollsatze zum Ausgangspunkt der Wissenschaften zu machen. Es gibt keine tabula rasa. Wie Schiffe sind wir, die ihr Schiff auf offener See umbauen mussen, ohne es jemals in einem Dock zerlegen und aus besten Bestandteile neu errichten zu konnen." 30. He similarly criticizes Popper's fallibilism, which allegedly presupposes a single correct approach excluding the ambiguity and plurality of scientific practice. Like Carnap, and like Kant, Popper assumes that a single specifiable system of propositions can be taken as the paradigm of all the sciences. See Otto Neurath, "Pseudorationalismus der Falsification," Erkenntnis 5 (1934): 353.

31. Carnap, who described it as "the core problem of the logic of science (theory of knowledge), said that in it are lodged all the problems that one cares to handle under the catchwords "empirical grounding" [empirische Begrundung], "empirical verification" [Nachpriifung] or verification." Rudolf Carnap, "Uber Protokollsatze," Erkenntnis 3, (1932/1933): 215. 32. By 1935, if not earlier, in the German original edition of The Logical Syntax of Language, he was already advocating the idea, more familiar in Quine's restatement, that no scientific statements are immune to revision. See Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, translated by Amethe Smeaton (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937), §82. 33. See Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 3.343. 34. See Carnap, "Uber Protokollsatze," 215-16. 35. According to Quine, in the discussion about observation sentences (Protokollsatze), there seemed to be no way to make sense of the question. See "Epistemology Naturalized," in W. V. Quine, Ontological Relativity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 85. But an observation sentence just means that "all verdicts depend on present sensory stimulation and on no stored information beyond what goes into understanding the sentence" (ibid., 86). This is part of the shift from epistemology to semantics, since epistemology is centered on evidence and meaning is centered on verification, whereas, as Quine typically claims, once we get beyond observation sentences, meaning ceases to apply only to single sentence (ibid., 89). 36. See Moritz Schlick, "Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis," Erkenntnis 4 (1934): 79-99. 37. "Das 'Neue' in Schlicks Versuch zur Losung der Frage nach den Grundlagen der Erkenntnis besteht hauptsiichlich in einer starken Betonung des psychologischen oder 'physiologischen' Charakters oder menn man will der nicht-sprachlichen Natur eines bestimmtes Erkenntniserwerbs." A. Petzall, Zum Methodenproblem der Erkenntnisforschung (Goteborg: Wettergren and Kerbers, 1935), 43. 38. "It is clear and as far as I know is not denied [bestritten] by anyone that knowledge in life and in research in no sense begins with the constatation of facts, and that 'protocol propositions' in which this constatation occurs stand in the same sense at the beginning of science." Schlick, "Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis," 80. See also 97-98: "If I make a constatation 'Here now blue,' then this is not the same as the protocol proposition 'M. S. on so and so many April 1934 and this and this time at that and that place perceived blue,' but the latter proposition is a hypothesis and as such constantly afflicted [behaftet] with uncertainty. The latter proposition is equivalent to the statement: 'M. S. made (here the place and time are given) the constatation "here now blue.'" And it is clear that this statement is not identical with the constatation [mit der in ihr vorkommenden Konstatierung] occurring in it. In protocol propositions we are always concerned with perceptions . . . in constatations on the contrary never. An authentic constatation can never be written down, since as soon as

I record the word 'here/ it loses its meaning. The constatation can also not be replaced through giving the time and the place, since, as soon as one tries to do this, one inevitably puts in place of the observational proposition a protocol proposition that it is entirely different [eine ganz andere Natur hat]." 39. Schlick, "Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis," 79. 40. See Schlick, "Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis," 80. 41. See Schlick, "Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis," 79-80. 42. See Schlick, "Tatsachen und Aussagen," in Schlick, Philosophische Logik, edited by Bernd Philippi (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), 235. 43. See Schlick, "Tatsachen und Aussagen," 234. 44. See Schlick, "Tatsachen und Aussagen," 236. 45. "I showed that one can formulate reports of experience by avoiding a particular 'phenomenalistic language' in physicalistic language ('observations,' when carefully formulated, are called protocol propositions) as follows: 'Karl's protocol in the time frame of 9:14 at a particular place." Neurath, "Radikaler Physikalismus und 'Wirkliche Welt,'" Erkenntnis 4 (1934): 348. 46. Richard von Mises, Positivism (New York: Dover, 1968), 92. 47. See J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, ed. G. J. Warnock (New York: Oxford, 1964), 123. 48. See Roderick M. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 109-93. 49. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 61, 61-75 passim. 50. "Locke felt that if a belief is to be credible, it must bear certain relations to the believer's sensations—but he never told us how he happened to arrive at this conclusion. This is, of course, the view that has come to be known as 'empiricism.' David Hume followed Locke in this empiricism and said that empiricism gives us an effective criterion for distinguishing the good apples from the bad ones. You can take this criterion to the library, he said. Suppose you find a book in which the author makes assertions that do not conform to the empirical criterion. Hume said: Commit it to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 67. 51. See Robert J. Ackermann, Belief and Knowledge (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972), 55. 52. As concerns "instances of knowing," he writes that "I shall assume . .. that we have adequate evidence for them, or better, that these beliefs pertain to what is evident. Then, given this assumption, I shall go on to ask certain further questions about the nature of this justification, or evidence." Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 120. 53. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 43-49. 54. See Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966).

55. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, translated by Pierre Conway (Quebec: M. Doyon, 1956), lectio 4, no. 10, cited in Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 73. 56. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 50-58. 57. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 25. 58. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 80. 59. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 35. 60. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 39. 61. "A proposition is axiomatic for a given subject at a given time provided only that (i) the proposition is one that is necessarily true and (ii) it is also necessarily true that if the person then believes that proposition, the proposition is then evident to him." Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 73. 62. Sellars uses this term in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), 253-329. 63. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 126-48. 64. See "Prelinguistic Awareness," in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), chapter 4, part 3, 182-92. 65. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 126-27. 66. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 127. 67. In response to the skeptics of the later Platonic Academy, Augustine writes: "I do not see how the Academician can refute him who says: 'I know that this appears white to me, I know that this appears cold to me.' . . . When a person tastes something, he can honestly swear that it is sweet to his palate or the contrary, and that no trickery of the Greeks can dispossess him of that knowledge." Augustine, Contra academicos, xi, 26; see Saint Augustine against the Academicians, translated by Sister Mary Patricia Garvey (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1942), 68-69, cited in Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 140. 68. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 137. 69. See Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 142. 70. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, 186. 71. See Jiirgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972). 72. See Tom Rockmore, "Penelope's Web: Reconstruction of Philosophy and the Relevance of Reason," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 7, no. 2 (1993): 114-36. 73. See his "Einleitung" to Transformation der Philosophic (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973), I: 9-76, esp. 9-22. 74. This move is more familiar in Habermas's recent writings. For Vogel, for instance, this is the main insight of Habermas's theory of communicative

action. See Steven Vogel, Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 145. 75. See Hans Albert, Traktat iiber kritische Vernunft (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1991), 9-34. 76. See Albert, Traktat iiber kritische Vernunft. "Miinchhausen" comes from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), §21, pp. 28-30. 77. Habermas, who is critical of Apel's ethical foundationalism, denies that it provides either an ultimate justification or a response to an ethical skeptic. See "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification," in Jiirgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 43. This passage, which seems to indicate that Habermas renounces foundationalism, seems to be contradicted by another passage in the same book, where he notes that claims for validity are unconditional. See Habermas, "Philosophy as Standin and Interpreter," 19-20. For critical discussion of Habermas's foundationalism, see Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Belief and Resistance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), chapter 7, pp. 105-25. 78. "Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlagen der Ethik, Zum Problem einer rationalen Begriindung der Ethik im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft," in Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophic (Frankfurt, a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973), 11:357-435. 79. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:359. 80. See Jiirgen Habermas, Justification and Application, translated by Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993). 81. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:362. 82. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:370. 83. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:378. 84. All theory of any kind presupposes "the a priori of the ordinary language understanding in the context of the life world as that which cannot be gone behind." Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:389 85. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:390. 86. Transcendental reflection on meaning shows that "the presupposition of the validity of moral norms in general is a 'paradigmatic' condition of the possibility of the justification of norms belonging to the language game." Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:394. 87. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophic, 11:397. 88. See Hans Albert, Traktat iiber kritische Vernunft (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1991). 89. See Charles Morris, "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," in Encyclopedia of the Unified Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938-1969), I, no. 2; and "Szientismus oder transzendental Hermeneutik? Zur Frage nach dem Sub-

jekt der Zeicheninterpretation in der Seimiotik des Pragmatismus," Apel, Transformation der Philosophie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), 11:178-219. 90. See C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Harteshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), V, §§354; see also II, §654. For Apel's view of Peirce, see his article "Von Kant zu Peirce: Die semiotische Transformation der transzendentalen Logik," in Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 11:157-77 See also C. S. Peirce, Schriften, edited by K.-O. Apel (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1967). 91. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 11:424-25. See also p. 429, where this point is made even more clearly. 92. "It seems to me that here the basic principle of an ethics of communication is suggested that also provides the initially missing basis of an ethics of democratic agreement [Willensbildung] through consensus [Obereinkunft] ("convention" [Konvention]). The indicated basic norm takes its obligatory character not through some factual recognition of those who reach consensus ("contract model") but rather it obligates all those who have attained "communicative competence" through the socialization process to strive for a consensus with respect to a form of voluntary solidarity in all situations, which concern the interests (the potential claims) of others; and only this basic norm (together with the norm that contracts are fulfilled)—and not something like the fact of a limited agreement—secures moral necessity for the individual normative agreements." Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 11:426. 93. "In this way, in my view, through transcendental reflexion on the conditions of possibility and validity of understanding we have reached a Cartesian point of the foundationalism [Letzbegriindung] of philosophy." Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 1:62. 94. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 1:68. 95. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 1:72. 96. See Jiirgen Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, edited by H. Fahrenbach (Pfullingen: Neske, 1973), 211-65. 97. See Jiirgen Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), part III: "Intersubjektivitat und Objektivitat," 230-318. 98. See Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 11:404. 99. See "Consequences of Common-Sensism," in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Harteshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), V, 5.525, pp. 367-68; see also "Issues of Pragmaticism," in ibid., 5.452, p. 305. 100. See "The Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism," in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, selected and edited with an introduction by Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), 58. 101. "How To Make Our Ideas Clear," in Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 38.

102. See Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Methuen, 1982): "Phenomenology sets out to isolate those structures of experience and judgment which cannot be doubted or called into question by even the most sceptical mind" (42). 103. For a recent survey, see Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge (Boulder: Westview, 1990), chapters 3-4, pp. 39-86. 104. See Gertrude D. Conway, Wittgenstein on Foundationalism (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1989). 105. See, for example, Michael Dummett, Frege's Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973), 559. 106. See Paul K. Moser, "Foundationalism," in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi (New York: Cambridge, 1995), 276-78. 107. See Michael Williams, Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 108. See, for example, Westphal's discussion of Hegel and Husserl, in Merold Westphal, Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 109-31. 109. For critical discussion, see Haack, Evidence and Inquiry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 53-60. 110. See "Foundationalism," in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 276-78. 111. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 14. 112. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 32. 113. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 14. 114. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 19. 115. She describes foundherentism as 'a theory which is neither foundationalist nor coherentist in structure, but 'foundherentist', as I shall call it, allowing both for pervasive mutual support among beliefs and for the contribution of experience to empirical justification; neither purely causal nor purely logical in content, but a double-aspect theory, partly causal and partly evaluative; and essentially gradational." Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 1-2. 116. See, for example, McDowell's critique of Davidson in Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 117. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 52-53. 118. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, chapter 2, "Foundationalism Undermined," 34-51. 119. See Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, 3. 120. See Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 121. "In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but re-establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false." "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," in Donald Davidson, Essays on Truth and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 198.

122. See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 137-46. 123. For a retrospective account of his various views of realism, and his new view, see Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind," The Journal of Philosophy XCI, no. 9 (September 1994): 445-517, reprinted in Hilary Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 3-70. 124. See Hilary Putnam, "Two Philosophical Perspectives," in Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 125. See Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, 54. 126. See "Hilary Putnam and the Relativist Menace" in Richard Rorty, Philosophical Papers, volume 3, Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 43-62. 127. See Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses." 128. "A natural realist, in my sense, does hold that the objects of normal, 'veridical' perception are usually 'external' things." Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses," 454. 129. See Robert B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 27. 130. See Strawson, The Bounds of Sense: "Kant's analysis of experience drives steadily to the conclusion that the experience of a conceptualizing and potentially self-conscious being must include awareness of objects conceived of as existing and enjoying their own states and relations independently of any particular states of awareness of them. For us, these objects are spatial objects, material bodies in space" (256). 131. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 370, pp. 395-96. 132. Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, 14. 133. See Tom Rockmore, "Kant's Letter to Herz and the Copernican Revolution," in Nezu Essays on the Precritical Kant (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2001), 156-74. 134. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii, pp. 108-109.

Index

Ackerman, R. J., 55 Aenesidemus, 70 Anselm, 95 antifoundationalism, 7, 50, 60, 77, 85 antirealism, 17, 38 Apel, Karl-Otto, 5, 9, 56, 109, 119-23 appearance, 9, 14, 20, 25, 26, 29, 32, 38, 40, 48, 54, 60, 61, 87, 88, 99, 100,103, 104, 108, 118,119,132, 133 a priori, 120, 137 Aquinas, 101, 117 Archimedean point, 77, 99 Archimedes, 47 Aristotle, 4, 5, 6, 23, 25, 26, 35, 47, 49, 50, 51, 59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 90, 91,106, 118, 120, 124, 136; Metaphysics, 3, 14, 21, 74, 75, 106, 108,131 Auerbach, Erich, 90 Augustine, 64, 91, 92, 106, 118 Austin, J. L., 82 Ayer, A. J., 89, 116

Bacon, Francis, 32, 48, 51, 52, 53 Baudelaire, Charles, 29 Bennett, Jonathan, 82 Berkeley, George, 12, 15, 16, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 54, 75, 91 Berlin, Isaiah, 60 Blanshard, Brand, 118 Bohm, David, 43 Bohr, Niels, 37, 43 Bonjour, Lawrence, 5, 9, 123-25 Bosanquet, Bernard, 14 Boyd, Richard, 36 Bradley, F. H„ 14,15, 16, 38 Brandom, Robert, 12, 16, 33, 34, 58, 76,109,127 Buchler, Justus, 138 Burnyeat, Myles, 12 Carnap, Rudolf, 5, 9, 34, 35, 46, 58, 66, 74, 75, 107,109,112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 131, 132 Cassirer, Ernst, 88 categories, 54, 55, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 83,102, 126 causality, 43, 93, 94, 98,102

cause, 3, 23, 47, 49, 54, 71, 93, 94,96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 109 Cavailles, Jean, 80 Chisholm, Roderick, 5, 9, 26, 47, 56, 109,116-19 Chomsky, Noam, 4 Churchland, Paul, 105,124 Cicero, 91 Clark, Samuel, 84 Clerselier, 50 coherentism, 118,124, 125 Coleridge, S. T., 37 commonsensism, 4,14, 35, 48, 73, 74, 76, 89, 111, 116, 117 constructivism, 1, 7, 10, 78, 99, 113, 131 Copernican revolution, Kant's, 2, 7, 10, 30, 33, 74,102, 103, 110, 128-31 Copernicus, 108,130 Cornman, J., 47 Cousin, Victor, 84 criterion, 18, 73, 87, 95, 96,116,117, 118, 124, 135 Darwin, Charles, 42 Davidson, Donald, 5,18, 26, 33, 35, 56, 57, 58, 74, 76, 77, 89, 109, 124, 127 Deleuze, Gilles, 78, 80, 81, 86 Derrida, Jacques, 26, 57, 90 Descartes, Rene, 4,5,8,9,12,16, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 38,46, 47,48,49, 50, 51, 52,53, 54, 55,56, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78,81, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93,94,95,96, 97, 98,99,100,101,103,104,107, 109,110,114,118,123,124,127, 130; cogito, 25,30,48, 49, 51, 54, 64, 68, 70, 81, 95, 96,99; Meditations, 51, 61, 64, 91, 92, 96,106 Devitt, Michael, 18, 35, 77,109, 126

Dewey, John, 27, 42

Diemer, Alvin, 83 Dilthey Wilhelm, 10, 27, 57 Duhem, P. M. M„ 104 Dummett, Michael, 10,17,18, 19, 78, 139 Edie, James, 86 Einstein, Albert, 37 empiricism, 5, 12, 14,17, 35, 41, 42, 52, 67, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85, 87, 111, 112,115,116,117, 119, 127, 130,135,136 Engels, Friedrich, 111 Erasmus, 40 essence, 52, 53, 96,132 Euclid, 65, 82,118 Fahrenbach, Helmut, 138 fallibilism, 123,133,138 Feigl, Herbert, 136 Fichte, J. G., 27, 62, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 83, 84 Fellesdall, Dagfinn, 78 Foucher, Simon, 93,106 foundationalism: Cartesian, 50-51; empirical, 51-53; and empiricism, 73-77; Kant as foundationalist, 53-54; as a system, 63-87 foundherentism, 19,125,126, 139 Frege, Gottlob, 26, 34, 74, 111, 114, 139 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 11, 27, 57, 78 79 Galileo, 28, 30, 45 geometry, 50,51, 65, 66, 71, 82, 84 Gibieuf, P., 93,106 Glashow, Sheldon, 21 Goldman, Alvin, 124 Gombrich, 90 Goodman, Nelson, 90, 133 Grau, Alexander, 76

Green, Thomas, 14, 37 Guattari, 78, 80, 81, 86 Guthrie, W. K„ 25 Haack, Susan, 5, 9, 47, 56, 109, 123-25, 126 Hahn, Hans, 113 Hamann, J. G., 69 Hamelin, O., 104 Harteshorne, Charles, 138 Hegel, G. W. F„ 10, 14, 16, 17, 22, 24, 25, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42, 49, 56, 60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 88, 90, 98, 104,110, 111, 122, 124, 139; Differenzschrift, 72,73 Heidegger, Martin, 26, 27, 55, 57, 58, 77-81, 91, 126 Henry, Michel, 60, 85 Heraclitus, 20, 28, 38, 40 Herder, J. G., 27, 69 hermeneutics, 10, 11, 40, 41, 57, 77, 81, 85, 86, 120 Hirst, R. J., 2, 3, 12 Hobbes, Thomas, 51, 52, 92 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 27 Hume, David, 14, 25, 52, 53, 54, 65, 70, 78, 102, 107, 121, 135 Husserl, Edmund, 8, 10, 25, 26, 33, 40, 56, 60, 77, 78, 79, 80, 123, 139 idealism, 2, 3, 12, 13-18, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 48, 54, 59, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 85, 103, 110, 126, 129 James, William, 18, 27, 30, 61, 83, 86, 127 Judowitz, Dalia, 90 justification, 6, 11, 12, 55, 73, 76, 81, 109, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 131, 135, 137, 139

Kant, Immanuel, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 50, 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 87, 88, 89, 91, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 109, 110, 112, 117, 119, 120, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133; Critique of Pure Reason, 3, 5, 15, 17, 35, 37, 55, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 99, 100, 102, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, 121, 123, 127, 129, 140, 83; Inaugural Dissertation, 101, 107; letter to Herz, 87, 100, 101, 104, 107, 108, 129, 140; Nova Dilucidatio, 68 Kaufmann, Walter, 137 Kierkegaard, Seren, 110, 111 Kojeve, Alexandre, 80 Kuhn, Thomas, 36 Lakatos, Imre, 6 Lambert, J. H, 68 Laplace, P. S., 114 Leibniz, G. W., 16, 53, 61, 65, 68, 70, 91, 130, 140 Lewis, C. I., 66, 71, 124, 125 Liebmann, Otto, 14, 37 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 56, 78, 80, 81 Maimon, Salomon, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 104 Man, Paul de, 41, 134 Manheim, Karl, 104 Margolis, Joseph, 105 Marx, Karl, 10, 27, 33, 105, 110, 111, 131 Marxism, 15, 111, 121, 131 McDowell, John, 16, 18, 33, 35, 76, 77, 109, 127 McGuinness, Brian, 85, 132 McTaggart, J. M. E., 14, 76

Meerbote, Rolf, 108 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 56, 79 metaphysical realism, 1, 2, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14,15,18,19, 31, 77,128, 129, 130 Mohanty, J. N„ 78 Montaigne, Michel de, 25, 40, 91 Moore, G. E., 3, 4,12, 13-18,19, 30, 33, 34, 35, 37, 48, 73, 74, 75, 76, 89, 111, 112,116,117,126,129 mysticism, 12, 82, 132 nature, 4,12, 18, 21, 23, 25, 29, 34, 43, 52, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 84, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96,97,110, 113, 116,117,118, 122, 124, 135,136, 137 Neurath, Otto, 76,112,113, 114,115, 116 Newton, Isaac, 28, 46,110 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 33, 110, 111, 137 Nozick, Robert, 5, 18, 26,109 Nussbaum, Martha, 40 Parmenides, 21-24 Peirce, C. S., 1, 5, 6,11,12, 27, 33, 56, 57, 62,122,123 phenomenalism, 3,18 phenomenology, 33, 39, 40, 48, 60, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 85,123, 139 phenomenon, 71, 86 physicalism, 18,115 Plato, 5, 6, 8, 10,16, 19, 20, 21-24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 33, 38, 39, 40, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 60, 71, 88, 90, 105, 117, 129; Apology, 40; Cratylus, 28; Gorgias, 28; Republic, 9, 19, 21, 22, 27, 48, 89; Seventh Letter, 23, 39; Theaetetus, 23 Platonic realism, 8, 9, 10, 21-24, 24-37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 55, 63, 74, 79, 101, 103, 104, 109, 110, 119, 126, 127, 129-31

Platonism, 8,11, 13,18-21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 29, 32, 54, 55, 56, 57, 77, 80, 129 Platonists, 29, 36, 57 Plotinus, 49, 50 Popper, K. R., 121,133 positivism, 85,132, 133, 135 pragmatism, 5, 11, 27, 29, 33, 57, 59 principles, 23, 26, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 82, 83, 91,106,107, 110, 111, 117, 122,132 Putnam, Hilary, 9, 18, 26, 30, 35, 36, 48, 57, 61, 77, 89,109,127 Quine, W. V. O., 11, 25, 34, 35, 46, 112, 113, 114,127 realism, 1-12,13, 14,15,16,17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 55, 56, 63, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 90,101,103,104,105,109,110, 119,126,127,128,129, 130,131, 139, 140 reality, 1, 2,4,6, 7,8,9,10,13,14,18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,36, 37,38,40,41, 43, 46,48,57, 75, 77, 79,85, 87, 88,91, 94, 98,100,104,105,106,109,110, 112,119,123,126,128,129,130, 131; mind-independent, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 45, 52, 55, 75, 77, 88; 89, 95, 99, 100, 109,110, 111, 126, 127, 128,129, 130, 131 Reichenbach, Hans, 118 Reid, Thomas, 4, 30, 35, 52, 74, 89, 116 Reinhold, K. L., 69, 70, 72, 73 relativism, 40, 41, 83 representation, 9, 31, 70, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 98, 99, 100, 101,102,104, 105, 107,108, 123

representationalism, 9, 63, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 110, 129; Kantian, 99-104; and realism, 89-91 Rorty, Richard, 5, 10, 11, 12, 16, 33, 34, 35, 36, 46, 56, 57, 58, 74, 76, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 109, 140 Ross, W. D., 81 Russell, B. A. W., 4, 5, 12, 14, 26, 30, 33, 35, 65, 74, 76, 85, 111, 112, 115, 130 Schelling, F. W. J., 69, 84 Schlick, Moritz, 35, 58, 112, 113, 114, 115 science, 9, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49, 50, 62, 67, 68, 71, 80, 84, 85, 88, 90, 93, 104, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121, 130, 134, 136 Sellars, Wilfrid, 4, 16, 25, 31, 33, 34, 35, 57, 117 skepticism, 2, 11, 20, 23, 24-29, 40, 47, 51, 54, 56, 57, 75, 79, 80, 98, 104, 109, 116, 117 Socrates, 28, 122 Sosa, Ernest, 47 Spinoza, Benedict, 8, 30, 40 Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin, 76 Stich, Stephen, 124 Strawson, Peter, 30

system, 9, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 110, 111, 113, 116, 132, 133; philosophy as a systematic science, 67-68; post-Kantian idealist views of system, 69-73 transcendental, 3, 25, 26, 38, 40, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 78, 79, 80, 83, 85, 99, 119, 120, 121, 129, 137, 138 truth, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92, 95, 98, 105, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 126, 130, 132, 139, 140 van Fraassen, Bas C., 2, 29, 67 Wartofsky, Marx, 90 Weber, Max, 137 Weinberg, Stephen, 9, 36, 88 Weischedel, Wilhelm, 83 Whitehead, A. N., 19, 55, 111 Williams, Bernard, 18 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 4, 9, 25, 33, 34, 57, 58, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 123 Wolff, Christian von, 65, 68 Yorck, Graf von, 78

About the Author

Tom Rockmore is professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. His many books mainly concern figures or problems in modern European philosophy His most recent books include Before and after Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought, Marx after Marxism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Karl Marx, Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy.