The Concept of Basic Beliefs and Obligatory Grammatical Evidentiality: an Evidentiality-based Argument against Foundationalism

Elżbieta Łukasiewicz

The paper discusses select problems of the foundationalist theory of epistemic justification; in particular, it analyses the key foundationalist concept of basic beliefs from linguistic perspective. The analysis is focused on Laurence BonJour’s recent defence of foundationalism. The paper addresses the question of whether the concept of basic beliefs is defensible considering recent research on the grammar of certain languages with grammatically encoded and obligatory information source markers (evidentials).

63-9-Lukasiewicz

Słowa kluczowe: epistemic justification · foundationalism · basic belief · grammatical evidentiality · evidentials