A Critique of Alternatives to Foundational Epistemology

Abstract

The perceived problematics that envelop foundational status of epistemic justification informed some non foundationalists to suggest coherentism and reliabilism as necessary alternatives to foundationalism. This work observes that such suggestion is based on our idea of what knowledge is and not on what knowledge does. And so, the structure of epistemic justification should not be based on propositional structure as widely proposed, but on moral ground. If our knowledge is justified based on the moral value of its content to the benefit of all the component units of our world, then we do not need any alternative to foundationalism, but to moralized foundationalism. It is in this connection that this work supports moral foundationalism as the epistemic basis for justification.

Keywords: Foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, reliabilists, evidentialist, controverted