Evaluate One Philosophical Theory That Tries to Deal with Agrippa’s Trilemma.

Evaluate one philosophical surmisal that tries to deal with Agrippas Trilemma. Agrippas Trilemma gives us the three possibilities when trying to justify a impression. The starting line is that our beliefs are unsupported the second that there is an in mortal chain of justification the third being that there is a circular chain of justification. One theory that tries to deal with this is foundationalism, which suggests the scratch option of Agrippas Trilemma is true. Throughout this essay I will argue why although one of the more popular theories, it still has its flaws.Foundationalism suggests that the first option of Agrippas Trilemma- that there are beliefs that can be unsupported- is correct for certain foundational beliefs. The epistemic regress command, as explained well Richard Fumerton, shows how this is likely to be the case. Its best to explain this with an example. Lets say, a man comes up to you and tells you it is going to rain tomorrow, and as evidence he says becaus e the winds are going to assortment direction. You ask him why he thinks this, and he says he just has a feeling.Naturally you take this as nonsense, a poor justification for his claim, and tire outt believe him. This shows us then that to be justified in believing something, P, because of E, you must be justified in believing E. However, lets say his justification for believing E- that the winds were changing bringing rain- was that he saw it in a gypsys crystal ball. Though he may think this is a good justification because he believes in that sort of thing, you are sceptical and again dismiss his claim.This brings us to expand our first pattern to what is known as the Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ) To welcome justification for believing P on the basis of E one must non only have (1) justification for believing E, but (2) justification for believing that E makes probable P. (Fumerton, 2002) From the PIJ we can easily show how the epistemic regress argument unfo lds. Going back to the example, if you were to believe P, there must be another proposition you could legitimately infer it to be true E1.But, surely the only representation E1 could justify you that P is true is if E1 is itself justified, and if justification is inferential then it would mean E1 would have to be legitimately inferred from another proposition E2. As you can promise this would go on and on infinitely, hence why its a regress argument (Fumerton, 2002). The solution would be to reach a proposition that didnt need any further justification, one that was noninferential- self-justifiable- and so could be a foundational belief.One foundational belief thought up by Rene Descartes is that he existed, in his famous Cotigo ergo Sum I think, therefore I am meditation (Descartes, 1641). From being sure of his humankind he then tried to build more beliefs, which is how foundationalism works. The brain of his existence is, to him, infallible, and therefore it could theoretical ly be used as foundation on which to build more beliefs. However, even such foundations such as the existence of ones self can be called into question. It is believed that truly infallible beliefs are very few, or arguably do not exist at all (Pritchard, 2006, 41).This is a fuss because, even if a truly infallible belief or beliefs can be deduced, they would be overly few and overly narrow to be able to build a involved series of beliefs on top of. What I mean by this is that the path from basic foundational beliefs to derived beliefs would be very tricky to bridge. Pritchard used the example of believing 2+2=4 as infallible. How then, he argued, would he deduce from this belief that he is sit down at his desk? The problem with suggesting the foundational belief must be infallible is that it is too strict. Logical entailment- where p logically follows a proposition q, therefore p cannot be true without q being true- is a key part of foundationalism, and so foundationalists with the belief that foundational beliefs must be truly infallible have to deal with this problem (Foundationalism, n. d. ). In response to this, Pritchard goes on to say you could argue that fallible beliefs perhaps could be used as a foundation. The agenting for this is because infallible beliefs are too strict so perhaps the only option is to open up to such beliefs.An example would be sensory(prenominal) beliefs perhaps these should be accepted as foundational beliefs. However he acknowledges that this does create another problem that you would have to argue why you think these deserve to be foundational beliefs. Surely though, sensory beliefs such as there is a book on my desk because I can see it have some doubt, and still require justification of their own? The doubt I am referring to is you could, however unlikely, be hallucinating the book and therefore are not fully justified in believing it is there.Your senses cannot be fully trusted. You would have to then justify, surely , how do you know your eyes are seeing a book and your brain isnt just hallucinating, and by doing this you are proving that sensory beliefs are not fully grounded foundational beliefs. This argument is similar to the evil demon argument and dream argument, as they alike dismiss sensory beliefs as foundational (Descartes, 1641). This shows that fallible beliefs also have their problems. Some argue that these non-inferential justified beliefs simply dont exist.Lets say that statement P is claimed to be a non-inferential justified belief. For subject S to be justified in believing P is true, he must have a reason. He must also therefore have a belief in which gives him this reason to justify his believing in P. But how can this be, that S relies on another belief? By being inferentially justified, it has just contradicted itself (Pojman, n. d). However a counter for this by some foundationalists would simply be that there neednt be a reason for believing P but P itself, as is the def inition of a self-justifiable belief.So, I believe the argument for foundationalism is a good one because as finite beings we cannot deal with an infinite chain of justifications. There must be a bottom, such as Descartes foundational belief. I cannot, however, ignore the arguments against foundationalism. Fallible beliefs should be dismissed as they are flawed from the start, because claiming a belief that can be doubted as fully-grounded is doomed to fail from the start. The problem of moving basic beliefs on to more complex derived beliefs is harder to counter, but Id still say that infallible foundational beliefs are still the strongest argument for foundationalism.Perhaps it is just that no philosopher has yet discovered undeniable non-inferrential foundational beliefs so far. Word count 1140 Bibliography Descartes, R (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy, in John Cottingham (ed) Meditations on First Philosophy Cambridge University Press, 13-15, 17 Fumerton, R. (2002) Conditi ons and Analyses of Knowing, in Moser, P. (ed. ) The Oxford handbook of Epistemology Oxford OUP, 204-33. Foundationalism. (1999) ONLINE Available at . Pojman, ONLINE Available at Accessed 18 November 12 Pritchard, D. (2006) What is this thing called knowledge? London Routledge, 39-41