There’s a deep and fascinating question about whether we need “foundations” in our philosophical system, and if so, why and what kind.<\/p>\n
First question: is the foundationalism primarily epistemological (foundations of knowledge) or ontological (foundations of being)?*<\/p>\n
Second question: insofar as foundationalism implies a hierarchy, is the grounding or fundamental principle at the top of the hierarchy or at the bottom?<\/p>\n
These two questions give us four positions:<\/p>\n
top-down epistemological foundationalism: rationalism
\nbottom-up epistemological foundationalism: empiricism
\ntop-down ontological foundationalism: theism\/idealism
\nbottom-up ontological foundationalism: materialism<\/p>\n
The ontological foundationalism can be reductive or non-reductive. Hence:
\nreductive top-down ontological foundationalism: idealism
\nnon-reductive top-down ontological foundationalism: emanationism
\nreductive bottom-up ontological foundationalism: physicalism
\nnon-reductive bottom-up ontological foundationalism: emergentism<\/p>\n
Likewise, anti-foundationalism can also be epistemological or ontological:<\/p>\n
epistemological anti-foundationalism: pragmatism (or: the good parts of Hegel\/Peirce\/Sellars)*
\nontological anti-foundationalism: process ontology (or: the good parts of Spinoza\/Whitehead\/Deleuze)*<\/p>\n
The main reason why I have resisted efforts to interpret me as an empiricist or materialist is that both empiricism and materialism are forms of foundationalism. Since I am an anti-foundationalist (both in epistemology and in ontology) I am as opposed to empiricism as I am to rationalism, and as opposed to materialism as I am to theism. My views might look like those of an empiricist\/physicalist, but only if one insists on interpreting those views through the lens of the foundationalism that I reject.<\/p>\n
As time permits I’ll explore the arguments for epistemological anti-foundationalism and ontological anti-foundationalism. For now I just wanted to get the conversation started.<\/p>\n
*I’m leaving aside ethical and political versions of foundationalism and anti-foundationalism, though I think that’s where the philosophical action is really at.<\/p>\n
** I’m only citing philosophers in the Western canon here, but Nagarjuna in the Madhyamika tradition of Tibetan Buddhism developed a consistently anti-foundationalist epistemology and ontology one and a half millennia\u00a0 before it was even conceived of in the West. Within the West, probably Nietzsche and Dewey would be the first consistently anti-foundationalist philosophers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a deep and fascinating question about whether we need “foundations” in our philosophical system, and if so, why and what kind. First question: is the foundationalism primarily epistemological (foundations of knowledge) or ontological (foundations of being)?* Second question: insofar … Continue reading