On an “Unintelligible” Idea: Donald Davidson's Case Against Experiential Foundationalism

A particular belief is basic j u s t in case i t is epistemically justified and it owes its justification to something other than one’s other justified beliefs or their interrelations; a belief is nonbasic just in case it is epistemically justified but not basic. Foundationalists agree that if one has a nonbasic belief, thenat rock bottom-it owes i ts justification to at least one basic belief. There a re justified beliefs because and only because there are basic beliefs. Such is the genus Foundationalism. One species is Experiential Foundationalism, the view that a basic belief can owe its justification to experience.’ Donald Davidson rejects Experiential Foundationalism. Experience, he says, cannot be a “reason” or, more generally, an “epistemological basis” or “ground or source of justification” of a belief; indeed, the very idea of experience justifying belief is “unintelligible,” according to Davidson. In this essay, I assess his arguments for this conclusion. Three stage-setting remarks are in order. First, most critics of Foundationalism-including Davidson-are not skeptics. Indeed, one frequently hears tha t because Foundationalism implies skepticism, it should be rejected. As it turns out, however, many of the epistemic principles that Davidson relies on in his attack on Experiential Foundationalism have radically skeptical implications. In what follows, I will assume without argument that these implications suffice to reject those principles. Second, Davidson says that he concludes that the very idea of experience justifying belief is “unintelligible,” but he can’t mean that . That’s because his reasons for rejecting