The Structure of Empirical Knowledge

by Laurence BonJour

How must our knowledge be systematically organized in order to justify our beliefs? There are two options--the solid securing of the ancient foundationalist pyramid or the risky adventure of the new coherentist raft. For the foundationalist like Descartes each piece of knowledge can be stacked to build a pyramid. Not so, argues Laurence BonJour. What looks like a pyramid is in fact a dead end, a blind alley. Better by far to choose the raft.



Here BonJour sets out the most extensive antifoundationalist argument yet developed. The first part of the book offers a systematic exposition of foundationalist views and formulates a general argument to show that no variety of foundationalism provides an acceptable account of empirical justification. In the second part he explores a coherence theory of empirical knowledge and argues that a defensible theory must incorporate an adequate conception of observation. The book concludes with an account of the correspondence theory of empirical truth and an argument that systems of empirical belief which satisfy the coherentist standard of justification are also likely to be true.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Laurence BonJour is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington.

His areas of specialty include epistemology, Kant, and British empiricism.

Reviews

[Craine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surely a book I will have to reread in the short future as I feel I did not extract all of the nuances of the arguments presented in the book. I myself don't currently take a very strong position regarding views such as foundationalism, coherentism or other variants such as empistemic infinitism although I would say that I loosely lean towards coherentism. None the less the book provided some interesting arguments especially against a hard foundationalism in which the author claims that in order to even formulate basic epistemological beliefs one needs to structure these beliefs based upon some previously held packaged beliefs. If one further tries to argue for a network of such beliefs then one may quickly become quite partial to the view of coherentism.
The author spends much of the time arguing in terms of an a priori coherentism where he in early chapters tries to deal away with externalist beliefs which he spends much time critiquing. Holding much more externalist views then internalist I did find the critique interesting although I found myself disagreeing on several of the points or rejecting some of the assumptions presented.

Although the book is from the seventies I do find the categorization of coherentist views presented in the book fascinating as well as the critique of foundationalism something that warrants more discussion. This is especially true for the strong foundationalist in contrast to weak foundationalism.

I must admit that my attention wavered a bit when reading the appendix and the language may be difficult for those not familiar with philosophical material. None the less if you are interested in the debate concerning coherentism vs foundationalism it is well worth the read.

Note: I don't like the star rating and as such I only rate books based upon one star or five stars corresponding to the in my opinion preferable rating system of thumbs up/down. This later rating system increases in my humble opinion the degree to which the reader is likely to engage with a review instead of merely glancing at the number of stars of a given book.)

[Ali Reda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A coherentist account won't work for the a priori. The reason is that a priori knowledge is essential to provide the very ingredients of the concept of coherence (one of which is logical consistency) and thus could not without vicious circularity be itself based on coherence. Accordingly, some other sort of account is needed for a priori knowledge, if such knowledge-and arguably any knowledge-is to exist at all.