#Foundationalism
17th century philosophy was characterised by the two opposing schools foundationalism: "i think therefore i am", and anti-foundationalism: "don't mind if i do"
August 19, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Which, notably, is WHY one of the few good ideas the founding fathers had was ostensibly that the constitution not only CAN change but SHOULD change, which is why "foundationalism" and "conservatism" is spitting directly in their face
It's very much this
July 4, 2026 at 3:58 PM
I think a lot about Dr Franklin explaining Foundationalism and seeing a lot of reflected gods in Narn refugees' eyes lately
Broke: Star Trek says humans will abandon all religion in the future.

Woke: Dune says religion will continue to be both a source of strength and a tool of control for oppressed peoples.

Bespoke: Babylon 5 says we'll get MORE religions, and Jews will have to sort out what alien foods are kosher.
March 28, 2025 at 10:42 PM
only foundationalism is based
just internalism. externalism is based actually.
epistemology is cringe
October 29, 2025 at 10:54 PM
IMO we can consider it like this:

- A whole lot of people thought that they only think about souls as a figure of speech, but even a figure of speech can colonize a worldview
- At root isn't just soul-belief but what it underwrites: metaphysical foundationalism, that things have fundamental nature
I think a lot* of people don't realize that they actually do still believe in something like a soul, but until they clock that in themselves, they get kind of confused when talking with someone who doesn't believe in souls at all

*large N, not necessarily large percentage
September 20, 2026 at 12:47 PM
Chaos and authoritarianism at UT Austin. Faculty have just days to show how their courses meet vague requirements of breadth and foundationalism. Proposals will be reviewed by an unspecified entity. No guarantee at all that those who review the proposals have expertise in the field.
UT courses on slavery, race, sexuality and environmental history are among those that could stop counting toward UT's core. bit.ly/4gPuxgu
September 4, 2026 at 2:02 PM
September 29, 2026 at 4:19 PM
theories of epistemic justification:
infinitism: turtles all the way down
foundationalism: magic turtle at bottom
coherentism: turtle rave
skepticism: no turts
July 9, 2026 at 3:53 PM
"Hans, are we the baddies?"
February 8, 2025 at 4:24 PM
broke: evo psych, essentialism, foundationalism, natures/essences

woke: structuralism & post-structuralism, western Marxism, “postmodernism”

bespoke: well, you know…
May 27, 2026 at 8:32 PM
a better way to think about mathematics is not foundationalism — the notion that semantically rich concepts can be reduced to atomic components — but using Brandom’s idea of pragmatic meaning-use relations: one language specifying what capacities one needs in order to be able to speak another
June 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
it eventually settled on a pragmatically-centered cross between whitehead's process ontology and self-reflexive anti-foundationalism that's aware enough to recognize that there's no solved answer to whether ontological foundations or lack of foundations exist or not
May 14, 2025 at 8:05 PM
September 23, 2026 at 11:59 PM
Epistemic foundationalism is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks
September 15, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reading this new book by Elizabeth Weed. Lots to chew on: her Lacanian analysis of identity politics capture's by neoliberalism; the shift in gender from a tool of critique to a simple discourse of affirmation; focus on certainty in trans discourses. www.fordhampress.com/978153150679...
Reading the Impossible
Reading the impossible has never seemed less possible. A few decades ago, critical readings could view the collapse of foundationalism optimistically. With m...
www.fordhampress.com
November 18, 2024 at 2:27 PM
If you build an intellectual culture in which a subset of secularist philosophers are constantly hedging against attacks from the more or less anti-intellectual cultural hegemony of a religious system, one form this defensive posture can take is a fixation on foundationalism.
March 29, 2026 at 7:08 PM
I was trying to say (apparently badly) that if Evangelicals had a more thorough and nuanced understanding of their history, perhaps they wouldn’t be so tied to the foundationalism myth that breeds damaging absolutist claims.
September 27, 2026 at 12:55 PM
This ended up being really bad. It seems like you really want to equate anti-foundationalism with immorality even if you say you don't. Like you keep saying it's fine but only use the worst people in the world as examples. Even when those people explicitly subscribe to foundationalism (i.e. terfs).
March 14, 2025 at 9:32 PM
whenever i tell people to read theory they never get that by theory i mean the non-theory of non-foundationalism that rejects both materialism and idealism to posit a fatally flawed imposition of conceptions onto interrelated processural flows. they just keep calling the police for some reason
May 1, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Oh, is this about the distinction between full and Henkin semantics for second order logic? If I recall correctly, Stewart Shapiro presents that in his "Foundations without Foundationalism".
March 6, 2025 at 5:17 PM
In its rejection of Enlightenment values and overcorrection for foundationalism, postmodernism unfortunately created a permission structure for any ideology rooted solely in the worship of power. 1/
November 20, 2024 at 3:45 PM
Yes, and it’s an absolute shit reading of Schmitt, who’d be appalled. He was no nostalgic! He had no thought of Catholic restorationism, he’d have scoffed at the idea you can just ‘get over’ post-foundationalism. He was interested in Catholicism because his main obsession was political form.
July 12, 2026 at 10:36 PM
or humean foundationalism. So, the need to evaluate authorities. Which in turn, unfortunately, can send the sophomore down the road of relativism. (IMHO, needless to say) 2/2
August 21, 2025 at 7:16 PM
The foundation of foundationalism.
September 21, 2026 at 5:18 PM