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se of his free will, in terms of his following false leads and making hasty inferences. Descartes argues that it is better that he has free will, with all of the attendant risks, than that God had created him as an automaton who never got anything wrong. (Note that this is very similar to one ‘solution’ to the problem of pain and suffering – the problem, often presented by atheists as a refutation of the existence of an all good and all powerful God, that the world contains (some) unmerited pain and suffering. If God is all good he would not want the innocent to suffer. If God is all powerful he has the power to prevent it. But the pain and suffering of the innocent exist. Therefore there cannot be a God who is all good and all powerful. Since these are defining attributes of God, it follows that God does not exist. Defenders of God’s existence against this argument argue that the pain and suffering of the innocent is an inevitable by-product of the exercise by them and others of the great gift of free will. How convincing do you consider this argument?)

TASK 6: Can error be explained, as Descartes suggests, as the inevitable consequence of human free will?

Thus the Foundationalist approach to breaking the infinite regress of justification does not look to be very promising. This leads us to Option 3, which I call Conventionalism. The conventionalist approach accepts that there is a vicious infinite regress but rests content with what appears to be our actual practice. We only push people for justification to the point where we are satisfied that, in our terms, their position makes sense and is reasonable or, in our terms, their position is manifestly hopeless. In other words we demand justification only up to the point that they demonstrate that their claims are anchored in a justification which we consider reasonable, or up to the point at which we consider there is no point in discussing it further because they have shown that their position is one which we consider ultimately unreasonable.

On the conventionalist view, we have to understand the demand for justification in terms of our actual practice, which is quite simply that of seeing where another is coming from. We cease making demands when we reach the point at which we are satisfied that we know where they are coming from, and we recognise that place as one which we accept, or one which we consider quite alien. At that point there is no point in discussing it further.

The conventionalist accepts that the regress of justification is both infinite and vicious, but also contends that this does not matter, for the whole point of offering and seeking justification is to determine whether or not your and my claims are anchored at some point on a platform of agreement. If they are not, we just have to agree to disagree. If they are anchored on a platform of agreement, then there is a reasonable prospect of working forward from that platform to resolve any disagreements we have.

TASK 7: Critics regard the Foundationalist approach as a ‘cop-out’. Why do you think they take this view? What do you think, and why?

Reading for Week 4:

Feldman, Chapters 4 and 5.

Week 4 Content
HUMR71-110 EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Week 4.

Reading: Richard FELDMAN, Epistemology, Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice-Hall/Pearson, 2003. Chapter 7

1. Reasoning Forwards and Reasoning Backwards.

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