An Aspect of Susan Haak’s Foundherentism

It could be said that if a foundationalist believes that “basic beliefs are about observable physical objects” (e.g., “there’s a dog”), then he's not in fact a genuine foundationalist at all. If he believes that a dog is in fact a dog, then he has already brought beliefs to bear on the dog-experience to start with.

How does he know that it is in fact a dog? Because of his prior beliefs about dogs. Perhaps he tacitly uses the conditional: If an object or animal barks and has four legs and a tail, then that object must be a dog.


“There’s a dog” can't be a foundational belief in any sense of that term. The only thing he could say is that it is a belief caused by actual interactions with dogs, whereas some of his other dog-thoughts aren't caused by causal interaction with concrete dogs. In that case, perhaps we could say that the causal interaction with a dog is foundational; though not the belief itself. In that case, as Susan Haak says, it is

“only propositions, not events [or objects], that can stand in logical relations to other propositions [or beliefs]”. (227)

The causal interaction itself is neither a belief nor a proposition. Therefore it can't “stand in logical relations to other propositions” or beliefs. The causal interaction with the dog might have been (as it were) a first cause of the belief or beliefs about the dog; though in and of itself, it is neither evidence for such beliefs nor a justification for further beliefs.


In any case, the same causal context - taken only in itself - can cause different beliefs in different people and possibly different beliefs in the same person at different times. The interpretations of our causal contacts depend on our prior beliefs and the prior concepts which we apply to our causal interactions or contacts. And even if a particular causal contact brings about the formulation of new beliefs or new concepts, these will still be dependent upon or related to prior beliefs and prior concepts. Such things do not spring up ex nihilo and neither are they “first beginnings” or “first causes” (as it were).


Even the adverbial versions of foundationalism smuggle in prior concepts and beliefs.


For example, “I am appeared to brownly” still uses the concept [brown]. And even the concept [appears] implies that the speaker is making a distinction between appearance and reality. In addition, even if that statement isn't object-involving, it's still property-involving. And where there are properties, there are also objects to which the properties can be predicated. Unless the subject thought that brown itself, or brownness itself, qua trope, appeared to him “brownly”. That isn't likely.


If the speaker can identify the property- concept [brown], then why can’t he also identify an object-concept, say, [dog]? He might not have done so that this particular time, of course; though there was nothing to stop him doing so. And if something “looks like a dog”, it still looks like a dog even if it isn't an actual dog. The prior concept [dog] is still (surreptitiously or tacitly) used by the adverbial foundationalist.

Problems With Naturalised Epistemology: Reasons & Causes

Causal conditions in and of themselves can't give us justifications for a belief. They can, however, determine the nature of belief. As far as justification is concerned, we need to make the causal conditions justify our beliefs. That is, we need to say why or how such particular causal conditions have contributed to our true or false beliefs. 

As Donald Davidson said, "causation is not itself under an aspect". It doesn't explain or justify anything. It only does so in conjunction with the epistemic practices of epistemologists who make sense of causal conditions and who also offer us the reasons why particular causal conditions - rather than others - determine the truth of our beliefs rather than their falsehood.

Reliabilists and externalists say that causal mechanisms in the brain hook up with stimuli that produce belief. Though do they hook up with stimuli that cause true belief? What makes the stimulations, casual mechanisms or whatever else cause true belief? Indeed do we even know how they cause any kind of belief - true or false?

The brain scientist can see what’s going on in the brain; though he can’t see the relation between the brain and the mind that makes sense of what goes on in the brain and what the brain gives it. Causes are precisely that - causes. And reasons are reasons. Reasons are in the domain of mind and causes are in the domain of the brain and world. Of course reasons themselves may be dependent on causes; though this wouldn't mean that reasons are nothing over and above causes.

The brain scientist can never see why we believe that Tony Blair is a politician. He can't even see the belief that P. Tony Blair being a politician or not lying is outside the brain. However, the mind - though not the brain - can both register Tony Blair being a politician or not being a politician and make sense of whether he is or is not a politician.

The brain scientist can tell us what subserves such beliefs (or even what causal mechanisms lead to this belief). However, he can't tell us why or how we come to believe that Tony Blair is a politician. Indeed we would need to tell him what the belief is and where it came from in order for him to tell us which causal mechanisms and brain states subserve such beliefs and reasoning processes. Without such prior knowledge, the brain scientist would simply be mucking about in the brain not quite knowing what it is he's trying to find or explain.

Of course causal conditions in and of themselves can't tell us everything we need to know about knowledge and knowledge-acquisition. How can they? Such conditions need to be explained and interpreted. Not only that: they need to be questioned and criticised. These causal conditions don’t just enforce themselves on the mind of the investigator. And they certainly shouldn’t enforce themselves on the minds of epistemologists. If they did, then there would be no such thing as epistemology. And there would be no such thing as empirical investigation either.

To give a simple example.

Which causal conditions are we talking about? There is an indefinite number. And if we choose certain causal conditions, the epistemologist can then ask:

i) Why have you chosen to concentrate on these and not the many others?

ii) Why is this causal condition relevant and the one you ignored irrelevant?

iii) How do you know that these causal conditions give us knowledge and the many others don’t?

iv) How do you know that you're looking at them in the right way?

Epistemology is different to science or empirical investigation. However, does even the most naturalistic epistemologist think otherwise? The naturalist simply says that we must rely on - or even defer to - empirical investigation or simply use such findings. How could it be any other way? If this weren’t the case, then epistemology would not really have a subject matter to clarify and elaborate upon. The pure Cartesian epistemologist may survive without science. Though what sort of survival would it be? It's a kind of survival that's individualistic or subjectivist. That it, the Cartesian epistemologist relies on himself and himself alone, at least in principle. So what’s to stop him making massive mistakes and barking on many false trees? 

It's the Wittgenstein argument: if there’s no one available to tell him that he has gone wrong, then how does he no that he has gone right? The world is bigger than his own mind, no matter how great and systematic his mind is. 

The Causal Relations Between Mind & World

In the Cartesian tradition, the mind’s autonomy was of paramount importance. All we need to do, essentially, is get our internal workings functioning and in good order. It doesn’t really matter about the external world. Or, more correctly, it doesn’t matter until we had got our mental ship in order.

In epistemological externalism (as well as in reliabilism), on the contrary, what happens before the formation of a belief (or before cognitive operations as a whole) is what matters. The question is simple: 

How did I acquire this particular belief? 

So it's the required causal relation with the external world that determines whether or not a belief (or cognitive process) is justified. If it's acceptably justified, then we may have knowledge. We may not even be able to elaborate on the external causal processes that led to the formation of a belief. Though if we're in the right situation (vis-à-vis the world), then such processes which we may not be aware of will themselves somehow justify our beliefs.

Of course it's the case that we require causal relations with the external world when it comes to our perceptual knowledge. That is, in a purely empiricist manner, all we really need are reliable causal contacts with the world. Though, as Kant might have said: 

There's much more to knowledge than mere causal interaction with the world. 

Our minds and brains need to do something with all the incoming data – they need to synthesise it. That is the case even with basic perceptual beliefs.

Can we rely on perceptual information alone to make general statements about the world? That is, no single experience (or even a large group of experiences) alone will tell me that, say, that all swans are white.

And do we ever have a basic perceptual experience of someone not murdering someone else?

What about microscopic properties, objects or processes which are always beyond perceptual experience? What does pure experience tell us about these things?

What about numbers? They're supposed to be non-spatiotemporal abstract entities. How could I ever have perceptual experience of - or causal interaction with - numbers?

So not all beliefs and bits of knowledge are simply a question of reliable causal contacts with the concrete things that the beliefs and bits of knowledge are about. The traditional empiricist had no convincing answers to these epistemic problems. There are things about the mind-brain that work free of causal interactions. Or if there are causal processes in the mind-brain, then they're of such a kind that we don’t even know that they're happening. In that case, they have no epistemic relevance.

The internal world must have at least a little autonomy from the external world. Though perhaps we don’t necessarily need to think of it at all as the internal world. The mind-brain is indeed a part of the world. It is naturalistically acceptable. However, the mind-brain does things that other parts of the world don't do. It thinks about the world. It has representations and images of that world. It has intentionality – that is, directedness. It deals with meanings, concepts, truth, falsity and the rest.

Although the mind is part of the world, it's a special and unique part of it. 

We causally interact with the world, and that in turn sets of causal processes in the mind-brain: it doesn’t follow that there'll be some kind of isomorphic and infinitely repeatable set of mind-brain relations to that world. The same causal processes bring about different beliefs in different people - or even the same person at different times. Something goes on in mind-brains that can't be accounted for in the same way that things that go in the world can be accounted for. This is not a mystical conclusion. It may simply be a fact about the mind-brain’s astonishing complexity and subtlety. Indeed it has been said that the mind-brain is the most complex thing in the entire universe.