Journal Article

Foundationalism with infinite regresses of probabilistic support

Roche, William

2018

Overview

There is a long-standing debate in epistemology on the structure of justification. Some recent work in formal epistemology promises to shed some new light on that debate. I have in mind here some recent work by David Atkinson and Jeanne Peijnenburg, hereafter “A & P”, on infinite regresses of probabilistic support. A & P show that there are probability distributions defined over an infinite set of propositions {p₁, p₂, p₃, …, pi , …} such that (i) pi is probabilistically supported by pi + 1 for all i and (ii) p 1 has a high probability. Let this result be “APR” (short for “A & P’s Result”). A & P oftentimes write as though they believe that APR runs counter to foundationalism. This makes sense, since there is some prima facie plausibility in the idea that APR runs counter to foundationalism, and since some prominent foundationalists argue for theses inconsistent with APR. I argue, though, that in fact APR does not run counter to foundationalism. I further argue that there is a place in foundationalism for infinite regresses of probabilistic support.

• Publisher: Springer Science + Business Media,Springer Netherlands,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Atkinson, David / Education / Epistemology / Logic / Metaphysics / Peijnenburg, Jeanne / Philosophy / Philosophy of Language / Philosophy of Science / Probability / Regression analysis / S.I. : EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION / Set theory