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Option 2 takes on the road to Foundationalism. Foundationalism maintains that the regress is not infinite but finite, coming to rest which you reach ‘the foundations of knowledge’. These are things (assuming they exist) which are:

(1)  known to be true

and:

(2)  Not justified by reference to anything beyond themselves.

One example which has frequently attracted some epistemologists is statements of immediate experience. These are sometimes called avowals, and the sentences which express them have been called (somewhat oddly) protocol sentences.

Regarding these experiences, it is claimed (i) they are known to you non-inferentially (i.e. you do not infer you are having them from anything else) and (ii) you cannot be mistaken in your belief that you are having them. On these two grounds they are claimed to be knowledge. (Some say they are claims to knowledge which have no need of a justification. Others describe them as self-justifying. The choice is yours. Either way, they break the infinite regress because the claim to knowledge does not depend for its soundness on a justification.)

Some examples:

(1)   I am having a visual impression as of a red, round, shiny surface in front of me now

(2)   It seems to me now I hear a bell chiming in the distance now.

(3)   I am in pain now – it is as if it is from my left foot.

(4) I am having a memory impression as of a face that seems to remind me of Queen Elizabeth II.

TASK 4: Consider the above list; then make up some more examples of your own which seem to be of a similar kind.

Let us consider the above examples (and you should consider any you can think of yourself). Consider firstly the claim that you are aware of these things non-inferentially. The argument is, regarding for example (1), that your having a visual impression as of a red, round, shiny surface in front of you now is not an inference from anything further, and therefore there is no inference that has to be justified. Moreover, the content of your claim is both incorrigible (not open to correction), and infallible (not capable of being wrong). Therefore it is completely and perfectly justified (or, if you prefer, has no need of a justification).

There is however at least one thing you could be mistaken about. You might use language that mis-describes it. Maybe you make a slip of the tongue and say ‘red’ when you should have said ‘green’, or maybe your English is poor, and you should have said elliptical rather than round. But – all that acknowledged – it is insisted that your content cannot be mistaken; only the words with which you chose to express it.

(Let us work through the other examples and satisfy ourselves as to whether mutatis mutandis [making the appropriate changes] the same points hold.)

But, all that granted, do these ‘statements of immediate experience’ provide a base line, a foundation for the claims that are built upon them. Stick with the first example. Your original claim to knowledge might have been that there was in front of you a ripe Jonathan apple. The more cautious statement of immediate experience is your ultimate justification for it; the resting place. But how do you get up from your resting place? While we may grant that the statement of immediate experience does not need to be justified, we still have to justify the step of passing from it 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。