1. Foundationalism is a mode of justification which is primarily based on a system of beliefs. These beliefs are critically analyzed and they either gain merit or lose justification based on the emergent findings of their critical and exhaustive analysis and interpretation. Foundationalism further asserts that there are some self-justifying statements that do not need any further justification. There exists some statements which are self-evident. These statements are in themselves considered irrefutable truths and do not need any form of justification. Coherentism argues that a statement gains justification only upon discovery of other statements that lend support to the argument statement. Every statement must have other statements which support it and give it more weight for it to gain merit. For example one might state that it is going to rain. Coherentism would demand justification as to why that particular person thinks rain is imminent. Does the person see rain clouds? Did the weather forecast predict rain? Answers to these questions might lend support to the previous assertion that rain is indeed imminent. In my personal opinion empiricism is a better mode of justification compared to foundationalism and coherentism because it demands hard and tangible evidence primarily based on first hand experience. In my opinion any attempts to fuse foundationalism and coherentism would prove futile since the prior adheres to certain self-evident beliefs yet the letter would demand justification of those self-evident beliefs.
2. In my opinion properly basic belief should have basic and tangible justification beyond the shadow of a doubt. A belief should be independent of any personal perceptions, mental or otherwise. A belief must hold merit and endure through the most grueling methods of evaluation and after all the speculation has been clarified the belief should come out as much stronger and viable than it previously was. A belief should also be able to stand its own ground in the instance where supporting statements may not be available. It should be easy to scrutinize and give clear responses to the scrutiny. Individual perceptions might alter the validity of a belief as it is made susceptible to the personality and habits of the perceiver. A belief should show clear independence of all these traits and go a long way in convincing us of its validity.
3. Sellers in his “myth of the given” soils the concept of empirically based knowledge. He is of the opinion that knowledge of what a person perceives cannot be entirely independent of that person’s conceptual processes which at the end result in perception. Sellers is right because if a person experiences an event, absence of any conceptual process within the person in relation to that event would render the person unable to clearly describe the event and thus the event would lose justification. Without perception processes the person would be rendered unable to accurately describe the situation leading to further loss of justification. The mystery of human perception can be explained in terms of a person synthesizing their experiences and coming up with their own analysis and judgment. Thus a person can grow from a small infant to a discriminating perceiver of the world around them based on their synthesis and analysis of the world around them. Without perception synthesis and analysis would be rendered impossible and invalid.
