Is Anti-Foundationalism an answer to Skepticism?

Introduction

The search for ultimate grounds of knowledge is historically one of philosophy's centerpieces; when viewed as the
question regarding the fundamental beginning, either of thought, reason, or reality, it might be very easily said that
this investigation is what created philosophy as currently understood. The ancient Greek's search for the Archè, in
its various forms, was both a detachment from merely cultural or mythological tales of creation and also an inquiry
on whatever the true origin, or source of reality was. In modern times, philosophical doctrines dealing with the
quest for the ultimate grounds, of both reality and of philosophy itself, have been closely connected to the perils of
Skepticism, as understood along the Cartesian/Humean line that shaped philosophy after seventeenth century: the
scenario depicted by Radical, Universal Doubt is one of the main foes to be defeated, if we are to set our foot on
solid ground. How can we lay claim to objectivity and truth if we allow room for an attack that would leave
everything either uncertain or completely overturned?
Descartes' Quest for Certainty could not have been possible in the first place hadn't it been for its necessary pre-
requisite of searching for grounded certainty. Foundationalism, the belief that in, order for philosophy and science
to have anything meaningful in their grasp, either their methods, or inferential structures, or access to what is
considered a relevant source of knowledge, have to be rationally grounded, e.g. either a priori, or without defeaters,
or even metaphysically necessary; in other terms anything that could not simply be shown as contingent or
fallacious in relevant cases. Such was the kind of foundation that Descartes found in God's benevolence; the
existence of the Ego Cogito was not enough; the experiences and objectivity that the thinking subject endured
might have been, simply put, false. A source for true knowledge is usually considered in need of some sort of
justification, or to be self-evident and basic hence the ground for a number of other beliefs, otherwise the question
of how can on be sure of the truth-conductive nature of this source, a reasonable question of rational inquiry, will
be left unanswered. It is not however Cartesian Skepticism that will concern us the most here. Both kinds of
skepticism will be here engaged, however it is this latter kind that has as its main object the question about
justification and the problem of ultimate foundations. This is due to Cartesian Skepticism being more directly
concerned with the actual certainty and existence of real objects and of the external world, while, as we will see,
Agrippan Skepticism questions the very possibility of the enterprise of justifying our beliefs altogether. If Descartes
had only been able to salvage the fact that, by a doubt being expressed, there had to be at least something that was
expressing something else, he would not have had much in his grasp (Williams 2001, p.81).
The search for foundations has taken a distinctive turn in twentieth-century analytic philosophy; indeed this has
been a defining trait of its methods and goals. The very origins of analytic philosophy can be traced, through Frege
and Russell, to the so-called crisis of foundations in Physics, Logic and Mathematics; the epistemological task of
granting a solid ground for knowledge has therefore influenced much of its course. However, after the mid-century
turn, heralded by the critiques on the dogmas of empiricism and logic-linguistic reasoning carried out by the likes
of Ryle, Quine and Sellars, it has become possible to view how a certain system of knowledge is able to obtain a
satisfactory degree of truth and certainty in alternative ways. The possibility that our certainties and beliefs could
not be grounded, at least in the way we would expect them to be, became something entertained in epistemological
discussions. Anti-foundationalism is usually conceived to be a search for explaining how and why we hold as true
and valid what we hold as true or valid, without recoiling in Foundationalism's theoretical load and commitments.
A question however arises; if Anti-Foundationalism allows for a looser sense of how and why something can be
deemed as true, a sense that does not need to show an undefeatable or a priori ground or property, how is it related
to skepticism? Isn't Anti-foundationalism at heart surrendering to Skepticism's stances? In contemporary debates, a
wide variety of anti-foundationalist philosophers would not think of themselves as Skeptics; one of the forefathers
and most decisive influence of Anti-foundationalism in analytic philosophy, namely Wittgenstein in its later
incarnations, would hardly be depicted as a Cartesian Skeptic. If anti-foundationalism gives up the traits upon
which Foundationalism shaped itself in the engagement with Skepticism however, it is not clear how one can be an
anti-foundationalist while at the same time retaining a sufficiently solid conception of objectivity, truth and
knowledge. This question is what we'll try to probe here. In the following essay we will at first individuate the main
properties of foundationalism regarding the problem of justification and the skepticism that arises from these very
premises; we will see in the second section how Foundationalism, initially regarded as offering the best available
weapons to solve the problem of how we are able to justify our beliefs, may have commit more than one misstep.
Therefore the focus will shift on how anti-foundationalism answers to the main tenets of its opposing stance, while
at the same time describing how skeptical doubts arises from certain ways the problem of justification is intended.
The final section will assess how much of the skeptical threat is actually disposed of in the anti-foundationalist's
approach, and how much of a skeptical possibility is instead retained in this particular stance.
Anti-foundationalism will be here treated as a broad category encompassing both coherentism and various forms of
contextualism, as we want to focus more on how this position stands up against to skepticism; in order to carry out
this task the focus will be on those anti-foundationalist proposals that put forth the conception of the
groundlessness of our believing. We will therefore not investigate in detail what might make anti-foundationalism a
better option than foundationalism or if it can be better understood as an internalist or externalist proposal, barring
extensive discussion of Davidson of Bonjour's stances; rather, the positions of Michael Williams and Ludwig
Wittgenstein will be scrutinized and connected in their arguing for an ultimate groundlessness of our believing
while at the same time trying to refute skeptical hypotheses.

Foundationalism, Justification and Regress

What is Foundationalism and what is its connection with the threat of skepticism? We will have to go a bit by the
book here, in order to briefly crop out of the larger epistemological picture what concerns us most in this inquiry.
Foundationalism regarding epistemological justification holds that the proper structure of reasoning, a kind of
reasoning that has to be truth-conductive1, that is, that can be shown to adequately grant us access to true statements
about objects, reality, law and so on, is a structure where a belief can be rationally entertained if it is supported by
either another belief or that can be shown to be a self standing belief. In the first case the belief is a part, a block of
the whole superstructure of epistemic reasoning and judgment; the latter case concerns instead those beliefs that

1 “The basic role of justification is that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point
and our objective goals” (Bonjour 1985, p.7)
are in some way basic, or more properly, foundational for the whole structure (DePaul 2011, p.235). While the
actual content of justification itself might be debated upon, namely on which normative system, whether logic,
intuitions or other epistemically relevant tools, is the more apt to the task, to rationally hold a belief while being
justified in holding it is a basic premise of any reasoning that aims at obtaining truths while carefully avoiding
falsehoods. This feature, this metaphor of a reasoning as being brought up by building blocks, sustained and
sustained by other, similar blocks is a standard requirement of accepted epistemological procedures; therefore it
should not be viewed as the central and only problematic feature of Foundationalism. To this extent, Ernest Sosa
described how Foundationalism, viewed as this kind of building-blocks metaphor, can be divided along two
differentiations; the clade of substantial Foundationalism (that comprises the true core of the stance) and its merely
formal variant.
Formal Foundationalism is for Sosa compatible with both Foundationalism proper and its opposing views, while
being instead in opposition principally to epistemic pessimism 2 (Sosa 1980, p.549). This Foundationalism purports
that justification supervenes on recursive relationships that are able to generate an inferential connection (hence
giving of a justification of a conditional of the form if A then B) between beliefs, as in any reasoning-chain upon
which an argument is usually modeled. Given a number of non-normative, non-epistemic starting points, the
normative and evaluative features of epistemological discourse are generated by the structure and connections of
the various beliefs we entertain (ibidem, p.551).
Anti-foundationalism has no relevant problems with this proposal; coherentism and contextualism for example, do
indeed point toward grounds in this sense, either the holistic system in which each proposition hangs up together
with the other propositions it is connected to (for the former) or the background relative to which a statement is
uttered or belief entertained for the latter. This is because the formal variant has no claim of uniqueness regarding
which are the purported grounds we actually start our chains of reasoning (ibidem, p.552 3).
The real showdown takes place in the field of substantial Foundationalism, that will be the kind of
Foundationalism we shall be investigating; as it was hinted above, what is really a defined mark of this position is
the claim of there being some basic and foundational facts for the whole epistemological enterprise. These
characterizations we gave also at the beginning of this section are way too weak. As a matter of fact,
Foundationalism puts forth in addition the following claims: any basic belief must be shown to be adequately
justified (or justifiable) in a way that is non-inferential or even more so self-justifying, as opposed to the beliefs
that arise from the inferential web starting from this ground, and, even more so, “such beliefs have to be … not just
adequately justified, but also infallible, certain, indubitable, or incorrigible” (BonJour 1985, p.26). These two
predicaments make up the core arguments of substantial Foundationalism: the first premise is essential in requiring
that our chain of reasoning can be adequately brought to a stop, lest falling into an infinite regress. Inferential links
do not seem to be able to provide this basic level, so the beliefs that form the foundations of knowledge and
epistemic justification must be of an essentially different nature. The second tenet highlights how these basic
building blocks need to retain a high degree of certainty. Our building stones cannot be shown to be ultimately
substituted, changed in meaning or content, without being proven at the same time to be fundamentally wrong; this

2 Expressed this way, I take Sosa's definition of “pessimism” to be reasonably equivalent to what is entailed by skeptical positions.
3 “For there might be several alternative recursive specifications of the class of justified beliefs, making use of different bases and
generators, without any evident criterion for selecting one as objectively correct”.
requirement is obvious, because otherwise Foundationalism would still be indulging into its formal subtype, as a
shift in the building blocks of an inquiry that does not bring with itself the implicit claim that the situation it
overcame is wrong is a picture both coherentism and contextualism would eagerly share. Foundationalism
furthermore relies on a distinctively linear conception of how the basic, non-inferential beliefs are able to confer
truth and justification to the inferentially connected upper-level beliefs 4: a belief is either derived, that is
inferentially determined and justified, reducible in some meaningful way to a lower level, or basic, that is non-
inferential, self-justifying and supposedly indubitable/incorrigible/etc in connecting the subject with the object of
its belief. In this sense Foundationalism has to offer a theory of epistemic ascent (Pollock 1999, p.23) that is in
direct contrast to how justification and truth-conductive reasoning is usually carried out in anti-foundationalist
proposals. These latter stances defend a view that has sometimes been defined as distinctively holistic (Elgin 2014,
pp.244-245) where the epistemic acceptability of a belief, and its justification or role in the broader enterprise of
believing and justifying are acquired only when taking place in a wider system of beliefs where mutual support and
commitment grants either coherence or the needed background context 5.
The distinctions we just drew are fundamental in order to understand where the stakes lie with Foundationalism,
namely why it does seem a so compelling alternative while at the same time being a widely challenged view and,
more importantly, carrying quite a theoretical load for a supposedly natural position 6, hence being open to a precise
skeptical threat. As a matter of fact Foundationalism is claimed to be the only position that is able to adequately
resolve the regress problem we hinted at before, by relying on the characteristics we outlined thus far (see Sosa
1980, p.547, Smithies 2014, p.74). The way it does so are intuitively natural; Foundationalism aims to obtain non-
inferential starting points, from which the rest can be derived, while other takes on the problem of infinite regress
such as Infinitism, the thesis that we need not to take the fact that an inferential chain has no end to incapacitate us
to grant justification to our beliefs, or any circular, holistic reasoning (as those in some varieties of coherentism)
seems to be either implausible (the former), or simply dodging the question (the latter).
Why this possibility appears so appealing to epistemology? That is because solving the regress problem, by
claiming that we have no regress at all in the first place but instead we obtain some solid ground, amounts also to
answering one of the longstanding problems in the realm of of justification, namely Agrippa's Trilemma. This
skeptical problem claims that every account of justification is ultimately culpable of committing one of three
fallacies, hence it threatens any claim to rational or ultimate grounds that would be able to confer justification on
our beliefs. These three fallacies are actually the three paths we alternatively choose to follow in the enterprise of
justification, all of them bringing to conclusions that are equally considered to doom the very endeavor itself. These
Tropes, as these horns of the Trilemma are usually called, were originally five, stemming from the Platonic
Academia in Sextus Empiricus' times. They are, going again by the book, the following: Discrepancy, Relativity,
Infinity, Assumption and Circularity. Why do we talk about a Trilemma then? That is due to the fact that the Trope

4 Smithies argues that this characterization is at heart what defines foundationalism: basic, non-inferentially justified beliefs, whose
relation to other non-basic beliefs makes them justified. See Smithies 2014, p.73
5 As Elgin herself notes, this does not at all mean that we do not acquire beliefs through any kind of ascent, that is at t 1 A knows P and at t2
A infers Q on the basis of P; this is historical ascent, not epistemic.
6 After all, the notion of basic building blocks upon which the whole enterprise of knowledge is built upon can be easily traced to be an
analogue to any position in natural science that posits an ultimate level of physical reality. Atomism is a view that we all do easily
entertain. Substantial Foundationalism aims at uncovering the “atoms” of beliefs. Atomistic Justification grants the intrinsic credibility
that Foundationalism is searching for (Williams 2001, p.94)
of Discrepancy calls to the possibility of Disagreement, which is not actually a defeater of Justification in itself, and
Relativity calls for the possibility of existence of other systems that might actually confer justification upon a set of
beliefs apart from the one actually used. Also this is not as fundamental in nature as something that would
ultimately doom the possibility of Justification; they are however related to each other 7, and they actually represent
the need of justifying knowledge-claims when we trespass the horizon of mere opinion (Williams 2001, p.62).
The three main Tropes are the Trope of Infinity, Assumption and Circularity. The first one is the foe we began with;
if every belief in our justification-chain is inferential, where does it stop? Infinite Regress is not usually considered
to grant a satisfactory and sufficiently solid measure of Justification. The mode of Assumption is usually identified
with dogmatic assumptions that posit an initial starting point, and leave unanswered the threats that can be leveled
against such assumption from the tropes of Disagreement and Relativity. Finally, Circularity is usually synonymous
with circular reasoning, that is, picking up along the chain of inferences and justifications a step we already took,
giving a closed system that can be easily questioned on how can it effectively refer to either the object the
justification is talking about or to some self-sufficient method or technique that is truth-conductive 8.
The strength of this argument is central to the very enterprise of knowledge, as it touches the very constitutive sense
of what a belief properly is:

“the sense of grounding [Begründens] is … not something dialectical, rather a constitutive element of what a
belief is. Grounds belong to a belief because a belief is an act in which, while being carried out, a subject
submits itself to a criterion: the criterion of truth. (Kern 2006, p.58, own translation from German)

By carrying out the act of justification, by traveling along its path we are at the same time entertaining a certain
conception of what is true, and how it is to be reached. Truth, intended in a sufficiently objective and solid sense, is
the goal of a classical epistemological enterprise; but in undermining this connection, by showing how this claimed
truth can't be either reached (Infinity), or survive a rational scrutiny (Circularity and Assumption), the whole
enterprise is shown as impossible (ibidem, p.59). The picture seems even worse when it is taken into account that
the questions raised by the Trilemma are to be entertained not only in a typical Cartesian setting, where a certain
account of truth, reality and objectivity are already present in order to be effectively challenged. In Agrippan
Skepticism, “nothing of importance turns on the existence of actual challenges or challengers … The problem
therefore, concern justified belief in general, whether actually challenged or not” (Williams 2001, p.64).
These features, added to the intuitive naturalness of the Trilemma's claims, that is their actually being rational
norms of scrutiny we would ordinarily share and support, make its defeat a central point of any epistemological
account we would call as such9. A mere argument from error, or fallibilist position, won't be enough to solve this
skeptical vertigo: fallibilism lowers the epistemic or normative standards behind a certain conception of knowledge
and truth, but it retains standards and a method of scrutiny in order to discern which criterion has to be followed in
order to have justified beliefs. Within the Trilemma the result is, instead, that it is basically impossible [unmöglich]
to have beliefs whose truth can be warranted at all (Kern 2006, p.62).
7 We might say that the trope of Disagreement comes from the Relativity one, which in turn might be a possibility of a Contextualist or
Coherentist system, that are sometimes accused of falling into one of the three actual pitfalls, the Trope of Circularity.
8 The question is, why wasn't the twice-picked up belief sufficient the first time already? If it is in need of something else we will have
nothing else than another regress on our hands.
9 “In this lies the skeptical strength of Agrippa's Trilemma. It is a trilemma that which we can solve only if we can dodge it, although it
appears as compelling to us prima facie, because in its explicit steps it calls on only beliefs upon which we ourselves agree” (Kern 2006,
p.61, own translation from German)
 Slipping on Solid Ground

It should be clear now where the appeal and the strength of Foundationalism lie; while Circularity and Assumption
cannot be followed, as their paths do not show an intuitive way to be stopped, this is not the case with the Trope of
Infinity. To halt the Regress, to show a building block, a fundamental stone upon which justification can rely is the
explicit objective of Foundationalism; it is here however to be asked from where the opposite position originates,
as there would not be such need if the soundness of Foundationalism could be uncontroversially proved.
We talked of fundamental beliefs whose property is to be non-inferentially obtained, that is, not in need of any
further inferential justification in order to prove either their normative role or truth. We further described the
characteristics that these kind of beliefs ought to entertain in order to play such a demanding role: incorrigibility,
being self-justifying and so on. We however also ought to notice how the Agrippan Trilemma is a kind of radical
skepticism that attacks the very possibility of there being any kind of justification while dealing with beliefs, that is
with doxastic theories. But it does not stop to this: a proper pre-requisite of the Trilemma is to have as building
block of a belief-chain, another belief (ibidem, p.67). We risk of simply moving from the Trope of Infinity to
another Trope (the Assumption one, as we'll see shortly).
Let's delve deeper into the characteristics of these beliefs that would be able to save what is at stake. What is most
distinguishing with Foundationalism is its appeal to basic beliefs that are, in the structure itself of both theory and
the reality the theory should help us describe, intrinsically privileged beliefs (Pollock 1999, p.29). Furthermore
they have to be obtained independently from reasoning (ibidem, p.30) as otherwise we wouldn't be stepping out of
the Trilemma in any meaningful way. We must have therefore either some direct contact with something that is
uncontroversially belonging to the reality of the object we have a belief on, or to a completely a priori sphere of
justification; in any case what must be obtained is a very strong, privileged kind of access to self-justificatory
beliefs (DePaul 2011, p.239). It is easy to see already at this stage how the first conception easily falls prey to the
traps of Cartesian Skepticism demanding proof of objectivity and certainty for the content of this direct contact
with our object, and the latter proposal risks to be defeated by simple Kantian reasoning. A logical, a priori
dimension is merely analytic, void of any actual contact with the object of our beliefs, hence granting no
justification to the towers of beliefs it should support, while an a priori conception that is actually contentful calls
on transcendental structures. This ultimate proposal might as well be pursued; however it will suffice for now to
remember how for Kant himself, the ultimate possibility of radical Skepticism is not avoided by such a move.It is
in fact the Skandal der Philosophie. A conception of Skepticism whose content is very similar to Agrippa's
Trilemma has been properly defined as Kantian Skepticism, where the problem expressed is about the very
possibility of any reasonably justified claims regarding something, and the very possibility of there being some
ultimate grounds at all (Conant 2012, pp.4-5, p.20). Such a self-evident, self-justifying basic beliefs seem to call
upon a very demanding transcendental metaphysics. Any kind of Anti-Foundationalism will try to exploit exactly
these unwarranted theoretical loads.
We might make the Foundationalist's task a bit easier by noting how, eschewing the a priori approach, the complete
incorrigibility and the absence of whatsoever defeater in ordinary situations of experience can effectively be
weakened. After all, if we pay attention to the continuous possibility of deception in everyday life, we will learn
that, notwithstanding the experience of being occasionally deceived in basic experiences, we need not to consider
the whole of our experiences in complete jeopardy when this happens. Incorrigible justification, as Pollock notes,
is more than is needed for basic beliefs (Pollock 1999, p.32)

“The methodological attractiveness of incorrigibility is that it seems to offer an explanation of how basic
beliefs could be self-justifying. If a belief cannot possibly be false, then it is apt to seem that you have the
best possible justification for holding it … But this is misleading … A person is not automatically justified in
believing a mathematical truth if she believes it for no reasons” (p.34)

However, no matter how this requirement is torn down, we still have a problem; the self-justifying property of
basic beliefs, not obtained by incorrigibility due to being a requirement of a distinct higher-order, as we observed.
The story goes the same way for the attempt to lower the requirements regarding the complete absence of
defeaters; it is true that in epistemic reasoning, we progress towards an apt description of a certain state of things
by adopting new beliefs and rejecting old beliefs. If we could only resort to undefeatable, conclusive reasons to
justify what we believe in order to carry on any epistemological endeavor, we would actually be skipping the
whole path to truth, as we'd probably already have what we were searching for in the first place. We reason instead
by means of defeasible reasons, and we actually produce them in carrying out acts that are deemed as knowledge
(ibidem, p.44). Therefore, basic beliefs need to be neither incorrigible nor undefeatable. We are still however
puzzled as to what such beliefs can actually amount.
It has been noted that, as the result of such considerations, it is only fair to observe how Foundationalisms are not
anymore of the strongest, Cartesian variety, and that Foundationalism aims to acquire its basic warrant by
superevenient properties, as is the case in forms of anti-foundationalism such as coherentism (Van Cleve 2014,
p.262). Only, what is to be salvaged is that basic beliefs can be allowed to obtain some initial warrant by means
other than their coherence or the context they are in 10. We are still however in the realm of beliefs, a doxastic
quandary that anti-foundationalism is eager to exploit by highlighting how foundationalism either recoils in the
paths of either skepticism or dogmatism.
The dogmatism appeal is what interests us here, as it strikes to the heart of Foundationalism and makes the case for
the possibility of Anti-Foundationalism one that ought to be entertained. The opposition to the very notion of basic
beliefs as here employed has been brought forth by the likes of Peter Klein 11, whose position is expressed clearly
on the matter when he explicitly calls for the arbitrariness of relying on some kinds of reasons without further
reasons, hence making Foundationalism unacceptable (Klein 1999, p.297). Even when such objections are left
aside (after all, whose the burden of describing what is arbitrary and what not can itself be a matter of debate,
Pollock explicitly claims that it is the proper Foundationalist task, see Pollock 1999, p.62), Klein's objections claim
the impossibility of solving adequately the Regress Problem on the behalf of Foundationalism as well, or better, its

10 Van Cleve enlists in the proponents of such a stance Roderick Firth, highlighting a Foundationalist proposal that entertains features
usually considered antithetical to it. See Van Cleve 2014, p. 263. Pollock, by relying on arguments on how testimony and memory are
employed in the justifications of beliefs speaks of Foundationalism as in need of a dynamic picture of basic reasons to account for the
impracticality of undefeatable reasons, Pollock 1999, p.52
11 Klein's own position is a kind of Infinitism, namely the position that gives in to the Infinity Trope as it does not require a finite and fully
graspable justification, has been deemed as compatible with Foundationalism proper, see Howard-Snyder and Coffman 2006, pp.551-
552. On a side-note this compatibility seems very like it is obtained on formal foundationalism's grounds, as we wrote about it by relying
on Sosa 1980. If this is so, then Infinitism is not the Foundationalism we are describing in this essay.
failure in presenting a reasonable account of it. Klein's argument relies on the old Pyrrhonian riddle of
equipollence12, meaning, if Foundationalism picks up a certain property F as basic, it will either need reasons
(hence other beliefs) to show it superior to other possible properties, or else, no sound philosophical argument will
be offered, and if it does offer it, we will have again another regress (Klein 1999, p.304). “Either the meta-
justification provides a reason for thinking that the base proposition is true (and hence regress does not end) or it
does not (hence, accepting the base proposition is arbitrary) (ibidem).
To sum up, any argument about recall to a basic reasons without further reasons to support them seems to be
doomed; even though what is required is more importantly self-justification and self-evidence of our epistemic
building blocks, and not stronger tenets such as complete absence of defeaters or ultimate incorrigibility it seems
that we must rule out its aims of offering a way out Agrippa's Trilemma, a conclusion at odds with the initial
consideration that Foundationalism could grant us such a way out. As we briefly saw, this ultimate impossibility is
due to Foundationalism sharing the Trilemma's own assumptions, that is, each building block of a justification
system is a belief.
Foundationalism may raise an objection here, as we have perhaps thus far told not the whole story: we seem to
have focused upon Foundationalism in its most transcendental, a priori oriented way, namely the search for basic
reasons which would in some way eschew their being subject to the same justification-requirements of lesser-order
beliefs and reasons. Indeed, much of Foundationalism relies instead on experience and sensibility as granting us
some “bare feature” of our object, upon which, notwithstanding the possibility of deception and error, we can
indeed call upon when describing and justifying in a adequate sense the object of epistemological inquiry. Even
though we are ordinarily not aware of much features of how things appear to us and how they are described in
perception, as we do not even call for ultimate reasons in everyday talk, there can be a way in which appearances
can be said to be prima facie justified, that is, not incorrigible or immediately self-evident in their whole, but
granting us some terms b whose means we can grasp a determinate, self-justifying description of the object they
are about. This is where the kind of Anti-Foundationalism we want to address now wedges its way in the debate,
the Myth of the Given, as they way it has been connected to both the claim of Groundlessness of our believing and
the problem of Skepticism is what is to be assessed as a satisfactory answer to the problem of Skepticism.

The Given and the Groundlessness of Our Believing

The reasons we highlighted thus far to make a case for why the Foundationalist's proposal seems to actually pave
the way for a rather opposite stance has been linked to its most theoretical and conceptual side; what we reached
thus far is that one of the main attractive properties of Foundationalism is its claim to give an answer to the regress
problem in justification, and that such kind of claim does not seem to survive a careful scrutiny, especially when its
goal of obtaining basic beliefs can end up only in switching one Trope for another, namely the Trope of
Assumption, that is a Dogmatic stance. However, we devoted less space to a different claim, the claim that, even
though it appears to be rather difficult to pinpoint basic features of justification within reasoning itself, the path
may still be pursued by considering an empirical, sensible ground, based on the possibility that something in our

12 Even though he does not explicitly call it this way. We will deal with it explicitly in the final part of this paper.
experience of the outer world is conveyed to us upon which we can actually rely once and for all. In fact,
Foundationalism is deeply connected with a starting point that places our knowledge of the world through
observation and perception, and much of its philosophical load is indeed not only in showing self-justifying basic
beliefs of the kinds we just saw, but also in accommodating into these basic bricks the report of our actual
perceptual states (Pollock 1999, p.25).
While purely doxastic theories might stumble upon conceptual problems in showing how foundational propositions
can escape the justification requirements asked for higher-order beliefs, non-doxastic, externalist theories, such as
reliabilism call for an explanation of the basic features of what we perceive and what appears to us not as a
function of how we can actually justify the epistemic ascent we entertain in epistemology, but rather as a function
exclusively of the relationship with an external environment. This proposal lends itself to an integration of
epistemological accounts of justification into a naturalistic picture of both subjects and reality (ibidem, pp.26-27).
These views have been routinely described as relying on a bare, a-conceptual understanding of what is Given in
experience.
Without getting sidetracked on what exactly separates empiricism classically conceived from more distinctly
externalist proposal, we can concentrate on how anti-foundationalism answers to this claim of Givenness, as it both
a) had a crucial impact in twentieth-century versions of anti-foundationalism, and b) it offers us insights on how an
appeal or a rejection of the Given places the discussion in its engagement with skepticism about justification of
such assertions.
Laurence BonJour's treatment of the problem can give us some initial insights; following his anti-foundationalist
stance, namely a brand of holistic coherentism where the very existence of bare, atomic-like deliverances on the
behalf of experience is ruled out, the problem lies in the paradoxical status of a Basic epistemological status:

On what basis is such a belief supposed to be justified, once any appeal to further empirical premises is ruled
out? … a basic empirical belief is in effect an epistemological unmoved (or self-moved) mover. It is able to
confer justification on other beliefs, but, in spite of being empirical and thus contingent, apparently has no
need to have justification conferred on it. (BonJour 1985, p.30)

BonJour's attack on this notion is here still firmly in the field of doxastic theories, as the empirical content that is its
focus is here again a kind of belief; however, the question he raises strikes the heart of the matter. What does it
mean for a basic empirical belief/appearance to stand out so distinctively from the need of justification that
epistemological reasoning usually requires? As he furthers his critique, an anti-foundationalist argument is put
forth, where the foundationalist's claims are analyzed and a contradiction is highlighted: a basic empirical belief
ought not be depend on any further empirical belief, but if we are required to be in cognitive possession of a reason
to consider such belief as basic, we are required to believe with justification its premises. Being the belief
empirical, we have no a priori ground to rely on, and we actually need another empirical belief. This contradicts
the hypothesis of a basic empirical belief that needs no further belief. (ibidem, p.31). The foundationalist has two
roads to take; one is externalism, and the other is to recall on a doctrine of the Given that relies on the Given being
basic states described as “intuitions, immediate apprehensions, or direct awarenesses” (p.32).
The first road is characterized by the fact that externalism does not require the subject of being in possession of
anything at all in order for a certain state of facts to actually obtain. What is experienced is completely external in
this sense, and so it would seem that by requiring no actual belief about it to be true, the epistemic regress is
successfully dodged. However one has to ask how much of success in this enterprise is actually reached: more
precisely, how does that amount to knowledge if the subject is cut off this way from appearances? By asking for no
beliefs or justifications about a certain state of things or object, we dodge not only regress, we lift ourselves from
any epistemological responsibility towards knowledge about reality 13; cut off this way, who is to say what obtains
and what not? Skepticism can here wedge its way in all too easily. Externalism in a more refined fashion requires
that general requirements for justifications are to be waived “in a certain class of cases, and the question is why
should be acceptable in these cases when it is not acceptable generally. Thus externalism looks like purely ad hoc
solution to the epistemic regress problem” (p.43).
The second road is more interesting to anti-foundationalism as our object of research; the objection is to anything
considered to be immediate, something of which we are to be self-aware, much as the self-standing beliefs we dealt
with in the previous section, only shifted onto the empirical realm. The rejection of the Given has reached is
historical relevance due to Sellars' attack on it in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, whose conclusions lie in
the background of BonJour's position, and of the proposal we will more in depth scrutinize, Michael Williams'.
Sellars' critique has exactly as its target the natural presupposition of empiricism, such as the supposed immediacy
and awareness of empirical content; the way it is even more relevant to us is how his proposal can be sketched as
an anti-foundationalist14 proposal, while at the same time avoiding skeptical threats or pitfalls. For Sellars the
Given as presented in sense-data empiricism is neither some bare property or content, nor are they grounded in a
foundationalist's way. What is for Sellars more relevant is the normative ability a subject has to entertain in
knowledge; the content of a certain appearance is directly linked to how a human subject is practically able to back
up his claims. When we justify what we experience or think, we cannot appeal to any basic, bare description, rather,
we rely on a shared practice of justification, description, reasoning (Sellars 1956, §36). The example of John the
necktie salesman clearly indicates the judgment of the color of one item is used as a conclusion of an inference
(§14), and as such it is not disjointed from a wide holistic inferential and normative network. The reasons, the
grounds of observational report therefore ought to be understood primarily as actions, their correctness as being the
correctness of an action, and its authority grounded on the normative strength it has for those who actively employ
such practices (§34). The very idea of basic, bare and immediate content of sense-data is for Sellars a mongrel, a
mixed result from a crossbreeding between two ideas, namely the occurrence of sensations and of a certain
meaning and significance related to them, a significance that would allow, mysteriously perhaps, to grasp some true
and ultimate content of objects encountered in our experience (§7). Without a conceptual array to discern what is
what, even immediate experiences are nothing but something mute. A foundational appeal to what is Given cannot
grant us the awareness of something that is the case, a Konstatierung of what appears to us (§32). Once this
account of human experience and its relation with reality is granted, one can easily see how skeptical worries,
Cartesian and Agrippan alike, arise from the epistemological foundationalism that is tacit in the view opposed by
Sellars15. As Michael Williams explains, Sellars' position is a radical fallibilist one that allows him to survive any
13 Let's remember here a classical definition of Externalism regarding justification “It is false that: one has a justified belief that p only if
one can become aware of some justifier or other for one's belief that p” (Pappas 2014)
14 It can be discussed whether Sellars' himself would have seen his position as such; however, the influence on the strands of anti-
foundationalism we are considering is way too relevant to consider Sellars' contribution as neutral on the subject.
15 “Foundationalists appeal to experience because they want experience to involve a kind of knowledge. However, what they give with one
hand they take away with the other by treating that knowledge as 'non-propositional'” (Williams 2001, p.100)
engagement with either skeptical regress, circularity or Cartesian scenarios, as such problems simply do not arise in
an anti-foundationalist stance. They have instead their roots into “a deeply misguided philosophy of language and
mind” (Williams 2009, pp.149-152).
Our turn to Williams' evaluation of Sellars' anti-foundationalism is not casual, as we can find in his philosophy an
anti-foundationalist proposal whose heritage is of a clear Sellarsian mark, a proposal whose engagement with
skepticism is definitely. More straightforwardly put, how Skepticism and the realization of the groundlessness of
our believing relate to one another.
Williams' work Groundless Belief is his first proper book and the one that is probably most influenced by the
Sellarsian stance we employed thus far; much of its main arguments are directly taken from the scrutiny and
subsequent rejection of the Given we just briefly sketched through BonJour and Sellars. However, Williams'
position resists categorization into certain schemes such as coherentism (as in Bonjour's case) or without adhering
to naturalistic positions or scientific realism (as Sellars). Furthermore, he tackles the problem of radical skepticism
and regress in a much more outspoken way. This is done by realizing, in the first steps of his inquiry how the
ordinary picture of experience is already loaded with Foundationalist insights. In Williams' opinion, the threat of
skepticism is leveled precisely against those background insights that make up much of the strength of an ordinary
epistemological theories, while at the same time offering also much of their weak points:

The threat of Scepticism actually arises on two distinct levels. At the first level, it arises to compel the
adoption of the foundational view: for the claim that, if there were no epistemologically basic beliefs,
knowledge could never get off the ground … However, having once accepted the idea that there must be a
foundation for knowledge, we are faced with the problem of explaining how our chosen foundation could
possibly function as such … the respite from scepticism afforded by the recognition of epistemologically
basic knowledge threatens to be shortlived: for having once accepted the foundational view we become
vulnerable to one form or another of the sceptical argument. It seems that in giving knowledge a foundation
we also fix its limits (Williams 1977, pp.22-23).

We can easily recognize the predicament we put forth earlier on in our discussion, the main strength of
Foundationalism reveals itself to be actually its own doom. The requirements of Foundationalism either are too
strong to be actually realized, or grant us no real intelligibility in how the issues of justification can be resolved.
Williams' connection between these requirements and skepticism forms the backbone of his whole argument, an
argument that goes at length in discussing how the supposed Given of sensibility cannot save us from the same
dead-ends when intended in the way Foundationalism would require. If the Given is to be intended as a primitive
dimension of experience, Williams observes how this is translated into a propositional content by an ostensive
learning of basic predicates. The more externalist variant of this engagement with the Given, requires a non-
propositional content that makes our rock-bottom level of certainty, however “The Certainty of the given is saved
only at the cost of making it unintelligible how awareness of the given could serve as a check on anything”
(ibidem, p.32). That is essentially the same objection we already raised to externalism, in the guise of leaving
unanswered of any truth-conductive contact can be established 16.
Williams' actual positive contribute to the debate begins while engaging directly with the trope of regress regarding

16 This conception is immediately reinforced by Williams. If the externalist's view that what suffice is whether something external obtains
or not, in the sense that the given is immune from propositional consideration, hence errors, this makes the Given something “without
epistemological significance. There is nothing to be wrong about, but nothing to be right about either” (Williams 1977, p.36). We will see
briefly how this is near to Wittgenstein's own conception of the Hinges of our epistemological discourse
justification: one of the main results of Sellars' he takes them to regard that we can discard the need for immediate,
pre-propositional, intuitively true phenomenal qualities in order to seek for justification. What is rather at the center
of the stage is how human beings are actually trained to respond to stimuli and how we actually come to hold
beliefs (either true or false) from immediate perception beliefs and how it amounts to knowledge (p.68). This is a
conception that Williams traces as akin to a normative picture of justification, a picture that he binds to
Wittgenstein's conceptions of linguistic rules:

The Wittengsteinian concept of a linguistic rule is not without its problems. A natural explicatory move is to
relate the notion of a rule to the notion of a criterion … Correct application is not always true application. An
application of a word may be correct in the sense of being justified. Thus mastering the criteria for the
application of a word is a matter of acquiring the ability to make justified assertions involving that word …
the idea that the ability to make warranted assertions depends on having mastered rules which specify criteria
for classificatory words involved threatens us with an infinite regress (pp.77-78).

Some proponents of linguistic rules as key to overturn this kind of regress have proposed that basic statements have
to be analytic in the sense that, if correctly uttered, then truth is ensured. But this brings us nowhere else than
claiming again that there are some building-blocks that predates and underpin all of our linguistic expression. We
are simply shifting form the Given in sensibility to the Given in the intellect 17.
Williams' way out is a no-foundation thesis that entails how assessing beliefs, through their actual being changed
and superseded, we cannot point at all at ultimate structures; surely, the justification-chain must end somewhere, as
we can only grasp so much of it due to our finitude. This however, shows that “At any given time we must have
some stock of beliefs which are not thought to be open to challenge, thought any one of them may subsequently
come under fire” (p.83). This is in fact the core argument of the kind of anti-foundationalism we are describing: our
judgments reflects our not needing logical necessities in order to carry them out. Justification needs to end on a
presumptive note of certainty and credibility, but there is no need of it being a logical presumption. What is
reflected in our actual justification practices are our tendencies and habits, our judgments are credible without there
being definitive, ultimate and necessary self-justifying criteria; we are instead able to make true reports without
even thinking about such requirements (pp.85-86). The Foundationalist, as in its empirical variant Williams calls
phenomenalist, will call foul on such endeavors: for him such way to obtain warrant does not obtain any warrant at
all. However the immediate answer from an anti-foundationalist's point of view is that by raising the requirements
for knowledge so much high as the Foundationalist would require would entail that knowledge cannot actually get
off the ground. Something that in fact does happen, along with its being a fallible and corrigible enterprise, an
enterprise that however retains a sound and reliable conception of Justification. The problem with Foundationalism
is that it implicitly sets the bar way too high by asking for basic, indubitable beliefs before being able to reach
knowledge altogether. This is also a result of the atomic-like structure of basic beliefs and certainties that
Foundationalism would require in order to function properly; the atoms of justification seem to be unwarranted on
their own criteria. In a typical anti-foundationalist conception however, the strength of the justification enterprise is
reached only when the whole system of beliefs, their internal relations, the support they gain from one another,
grant us enough tools in order to begin to acquire knowledge. Without indulging in analysis of how various
proposals of coherentism and contextualism actually articulate such assumptions, what is relevant here against
17 On a very interesting historical side-note, this is exactly the critique that Hegel expressed towards Kantian epistemology, especially in his
writings up to the Phenomenology of Spirit
Foundationalism is to observe how our beliefs and our system of justification emerge as a whole (p.91, see also
Wittgenstein 1969, §141).
Couldn't here skepticism wedge its way in by advocating either a) a possibility of revoking in doubts the whole of
the system instead of the single atomic beliefs or b) the fact that anti-foundationalism puts rather contingent
requirements on obtaining knowledge, guidelines so loose that actually could help us in no way in discerning
whether a knowledge-claim is in fact true or false? Much of the no-foundation thesis is at stake here. Williams'
strategy is to highlight how these kinds of skeptical problems can't be native to the task of knowledge on its own,
but rather, skepticism of this kind is parasitic on Foundationalism and its epistemological paradigm, namely
epistemological realism. On the first question, Williams' attack is quite straightforward; the questioning of all of
our beliefs at once, a way that pursues Descartes Radical Skepticism, is seen as connected with the need of
indubitable justification as intended by Foundationalism. These are “two sides of the same coin. Nothing testifies
more strongly to the vacuity of the question than the answers forced upon us by the view of justification upon
which the question depends” (Williams 1977, p.98). The second question is diagnosed as a haunting pictures that is
implicit in much epistemological proposals: what is pressing here is the same predicament that is repeatedly
leveled against coherentism, namely that the looseness of justification requirements upon an anti-foundationalist
theory, may result in an epistemological system that is
.
floating above the world with no point of contact. But this worry is incoherent, because the concept of 'the
world' which is operative here is completely vacuous. As soon as we start thinking of that with which belief
as to make contact as … we are operating within some particular theory of the way the world is (p.101)

Anti-foundationalism's positions against skepticism and skeptical scenario can be more fruitfully understood by
referring to another of Williams' papers, that ultimately laid the foundations for his later book Unnatural Doubts.
His answer to the possibility of skepticism is here more expanded upon: Skepticism, especially of the radical,
Cartesian kind is to be read as direct consequence of Foundationalism's epistemological claims. When this
epistemic malaise is diagnosed, the purported effect is to show how misplaced and misguided is the skeptical
position along with the picture it tries to revoke into doubt.
For Williams, skeptical arguments are born and retain their strength exactly on Foundationalism's presupposition.
These presuppositions, implicit also in the aim of epistemological realism, entail the concept of totality, of giving
reasons and grounding effectively the knowledge claims about the world without deriving the premises to do this
from other bits of knowledge of the world, from fact taken for granted (Williams 1988, p.422). This stance,
searching for some invariant properties, the basic beliefs, our building-blocks, or immediate sensations we dealt all
the way through here, works in the exact way a kind of semantic Platonism would, as in requiring an ultimate
match between our justificatory practices, knowledge claims and something out there that is need to be grounded
(ibidem, p.428). Of course, when such questions are raised, Skepticism, of either the Cartesian or Agrippan variant
can make its point clear and sound, exploiting the gap that has been created. The no-foundations thesis rejects the
very horizon in which such questions are possible.
There is, however, a no-foundation stance that predates Williams' own, and whose aim is to make even more clear
the above nexus, while showing how can we appeal to justification and certainty, while undercutting skepticism's
own ground, namely Wittgenstein's later philosophy, especially in his notes published as On Certainty18. In this
work, Wittgenstein is taken to be engaged with explicitly epistemological themes as he had done before only in his
remarks on mathematics. Skepticism and empirical certainty take here fully the stage here. Some commentators
have taken Wittgenstein to defend a plain anti-skeptical and Foundationalist position here, but this is not a good
description of his epistemological stance, at all for the latter case, and at least in part for the former. Wittgenstein
deals with the commonsensical and naïve empiricist claims of Moore's proof of the external world; while Moore's
position is not as well structured as some of the kinds of Foundationalism we encounter nowadays, his claims are
however quite strong and headed in the same direction. The proof of the reality of the external world is granted to
us by the basic beliefs we obtain from simple acts we all exercise in our everyday life: raising a hand, looking at it,
reasoning whether the circumstances of our observation are reliable and so on. If Wittgenstein's position would
share the same core aims, he would probably not devote a whole lot of time to his engagement with it. However,
Moore's position troubled him for the last years of his life and gave him the ground he needed to fully enter
epistemological debate.
How does Wittgenstein position himself regarding Foundationalism in his debate with Moore? Wittgenstein begins
to inquire in the queerness of Moore's proof; for Wittgenstein it displays the strange properties of being arguably
reasonable and understandable yet unsatisfying in providing an actual answer to skepticism. This is problematic
because the proofs heads in two different ways; it is both an answer to skepticism, and a claim to certainty. A
grounded claim. This argument would therefore show how a grounded answer to skepticism can be provided.
Wittgenstein strikes directly at this question at the beginning of his exposition: if something has to be demonstrated
from anything else, this latter ground must be held strongly than what is demonstrated, if certainty is to be obtained
(Wittgenstein 1969, §1). Arguably, Moore's proof does not satisfy this requirement. If he intends to prove the reality
of the outside already from the outside, with the conclusion already contained in the premisses in this way, all is he
doing is applying a logical fallacy (Wright 2004, p.373). If the statements Moore purports to know are claimed by
Moore himself to be known with the certainty he strives for it is only because being mistaken, committing an error
in this enterprise, is something already ruled out (Wittgenstein 1969, §21), and the deliverances of sense-data, of
empiricism, of perceptual knowledge already valued to be true and/or to carry an unquestionable given, but to
regard something as sure evidence because we say it is already certain it is a senseless move (ibidem, §197). What
is Moore here committing are essentially variations on the trope of Assumption and Circularity as we saw them
here described along with the same reliance on what is Given, this time exemplified by his hands and his moving
them, that we already analyzed. Moore's reliance on his own certainty of it is “as certain as anything that I would
produce in evidence for it. That is why I am not in a position to take the sight of my hands as evidence for it”
(§250). The point made by Wittgenstein throughout On Certainty is rather clear; in order for Skepticism to be dealt
with the weapons of Foundationalism, of justified, grounded belief, a strong claim to truth must be put forth:

One says “I know" when one is ready to give compelling grounds. "I know" relates to a possibility of
demonstrating the truth. Whether someone knows something can come to light, assuming that he is convinced
of it. But if what he believes is of such a kind that the grounds that he can give are no surer than his assertion,
then he cannot say that he knows what he believes (§243)

18 While the influence of Wittgenstein's philosophy on Williams' own is out of question, the relation between On Certainty and anti-
foundationalism has been dutifully investigated a bit later than other facets of Wittgenstein's thought, due in part to the relative lateness
of the publication of On Certainty
These grounds are not lacking however just because Moore's Proof is either a logical fallacy, or because it tries to
obtain more than it is allowed to; for Wittgenstein the trouble resides also in the absence of any possibility of both
drawing a definitive distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs and a distinction between what should always
justify what; distinctions that, in order for foundationalism to be effective, have to outline the universality and
specifiability of what grounds what (Williams 2005, p.51). More in detail, Wittgenstein is opposed to the very
existence of any particular, explicitly normative method by means of whom we can obtain an ultimate and
universal stance, and that concerns therefore also knowledge and justification (Wittgenstein 1969, §27). In the end,
what matters is how knowledge and justification are actually treated in our language games: claiming knowledge
involves having, or at least believing of having, proper grounds for this kind of judgment, but are given no proper
grounds apart from those we actually employ in the language game itself (ibidem, §18). To claim that we know we
have two hands, or that, apart from certain subjects from 1969 onwards, we have never been to the moon is “as
sure a thing for me as any grounds I could give for it” (§111); justification and knowledge are essentially practices,
language games we pursue and that hold a certain significance for us. For Wittgenstein we are not left to either an
infinite chain of beliefs, or to the need dogmatic assumptions, rather what gives our claims the strength they have
in our language games is the way we hold them as certain, they way we treat them as true or false, correct or
incorrect, they way we act in the language games of justification and knowledge, and the way they can actively be
shared or understood by others (Williams 2005, p.53, cf. Wittgenstein 1969, §100, 173, 174, 474, 560)

Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;-but the end is not certain propositions'
striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the
bottom of the language-game. (§204)

The whole enterprise of being certain of something, of justifying it, of claiming a certain degree of truth and
knowledge is not something that has no end in sight, as the rejection of ultimate foundations might sometimes
imply. Wittgenstein's picture is an anti-foundationalist picture that compels us to realize the groundlessness of our
believing (§166), while at the same time observing that we do offer justification and we are certain of what we say
notwithstanding the impossibility of uncovering ultimate foundations. This picture is a scenario where the practices
of justification reflect the way we employ them in our language games, the way we relate to them; these practices
can change over time (§256), entailing a pragmatic scenario that reveals how our beliefs are not founded in the way
Foundationalism would require (§253), as the ground of our convictions is what it is, our convictions, our being
persuaded by them to carry the function they carry. Justification comes effectively to an end in such a fashion
(§192), a justification-conferring structure that does not single out a single, definitive rule or method or intuition
that strikes us as inherently true, but rather shows the mutual support, the characteristics of the structure of
justification itself that grant justification on our beliefs 19 (§142). As we saw in Williams case, knowledge, certainty
and justification do emerge as a whole, as a system in which, and only within it, “has a particular bit the value we
give it” (§410).
How does this structure of justification relates to skepticism? Agrippan Tropes are seemingly stopped with the
observation of how we actually treat questions regarding justification and certainty, requiring no further
19 “My judgments themselves characterize the way I judge, characterize the nature of judgment” (§149). The same sentence hold when we
substitute judgment with justification.
questioning or inquire apart from simply observing what we do in our language games. What is however the status
of doubt and its radical claims regarding this conception of justification? If the enterprises of certainty and
justification concern only the various language games we actually play, couldn't all of this be defeated by the very
broad, general, and encompassing claims of radical skepticism? Wittgenstein's answer involves observing around
what and how our justification practices revolve; the famous idea put forth here is that of the so called hinge-
certainties, sometimes called also the scaffolding of our thought and language or also the Weltbild we inherit (cf.
Pritchard 2012, p.256). In order to carry out what we carry out we actively treat some sentences as exempt from
doubt, as lying “apart from the route travelled by inquiry” (Wittgenstein 1969, §88). Wittgenstein makes two points
we already saw in our analysis of Williams' anti-foundationalism: we cannot, we ought not and we do not begin
with doubting as Cartesian Skepticism would usually require and we need a stock of beliefs we don't doubt in order
to do that. We begin somewhere by simply not-doubting what we do or have already in our grasp: “hasty but
excusable, it is part of judging” (§150).
This means that the anti-foundationalism brought forth by Wittgenstein tries to answer skepticism by observing
how we effectively sidestep such radical questions; the hinges we have, the angles upon which we effectively turn
our inquiries, our certainty and knowledge, are what allow us to make sense of both what to hold as certain, and
what to doubt. Three paragraphs in sequence explain carefully what does it amount to:

That is to say, the questions we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some proposition are exempt
from doubt, are, as it were like hinges on which those turn ( §341)
That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted
(§342)
But it isn't that the situation is like this: We just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced
to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put (§343)

For Wittgenstein, to be bound to such hinges is essential in order to have a belief-system at all, and such hinges, in
order to work properly are required to be exempt from doubt (Pritchard 2012, p.257). As we saw earlier, these
hinges are expressed by the way we act in the language games of justification, certainty, by how we hold something
and true, and the reasons we appeal to in the very same language games. This might be pictured as an immanent
way of conceiving justification against either a transcendental or merely empirical one that would rely in some
fundamental ways on kinds of givenness either in experience or thought. Doubt is here undercut, there is no place
for a radical, original skepticism; skepticism is something that can only rise when knowledge is already on the
table, as we saw in Williams' critique of epistemological foundationalism. “If you tried to doubt everything you
would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty” (Wittgenstein 1969,
§115) If there were no such fundamental hinges, there would be no belief system, hence no doubt at all; if we were
to question the hinges themselves, doubt would ultimately wander in meaningless directions due to it, and the
system it was expressed into as well, losing its (§56).

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this
system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to
the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in
which arguments have their life (§105)

This system is the backdrop, or background that we inherit and upon that which we decide what is true or false and
what there is to doubt or not (§94-95). This background, this system, brings within itself both what can be
considered certain and what can be doubted; doubting itself is a system (§126), a system that cannot however be as
all-embracing as Cartesian Skepticism would portray it to be. “A doubt that doubted everything is not even a
doubt” (§450). As we saw this backdrop is something that can change over time 20.
Our relation to this backdrop is for Wittgenstein a kind of animal commitment, or primitive trust (§359, 475); this
means therefore that such hinges are not grounded in any epistemologically satisfying way. The way we are
committed to these hinges entails that whatever rational support for these hinges may be offered, it would involve
the presupposition of the truth of these very same hinges (Pritchard 2012, p.267). Hence the groundlessness, the
system, the backdrop that emerges as a whole, the terrain in which we already move our steps and play the
epistemological language game, without any need to either find ultimate, basic beliefs, or to defeat a kind of
radical, skeptical doubt that in this immanent proposal would simply find no place to start. A language game is
neither reasonable nor unreasonable, it's “there – like our life” (Wittgenstein 1969, §559).

A kind of Skepticism?

The way Anti-Foundationalism has been here portrayed has had its focus on the purported groundlessness of our
believing; this has allowed us to focus on its relationship with the issue of justification and of how skepticism can
be answered while avoiding the dead-ends and trapdoors of foundationalism. A more comprehensive overview
would have had to analyze in detail more articulated proposal such as Coherentism or Contextualism, but, as the
focus was how does Anti-Foundationalism actually answer skepticism, the areas we covered here will do the job in
any case. We saw that its technique to dispose of Cartesian worries has been to undercut its own position, showing
how such problems ought not to arise in our actual epistemological endeavors. We could make this clearer by
recalling Merleau-Ponty's famous motto “To ask whether the world is real, is not having understood what has been
just asked”. This has been sometimes called in the history of philosophy an elenctical confutation of skepticism,
showing how the demands of radical skepticism, ultimately foretell its own fall. Anti-Foundationalism can, in this
regard, offer a way out of this kind without the need to rely on ultimate basic belief that would still leave us
enthralled in skepticism.
Regarding the question of Justification, the answer we outlined was that, given that our system of belief is both a
whole that cannot be considered justified by singling out any particular belief, and a system in which the very
question of justification (and of what justification is) is actually developed, the skeptical scenario portrayed by
Agrippa's Trilemma regarding justification poses questions that can have actually no meaningful answers, as the
quest for a solution of its three horns would extend the language game of justification from without its own limits.
Furthermore, Agrippa's Trilemma can be viewed as arising from and relying on the same epistemological
Foundationalism from which Cartesian Skepticism came from; if the search for ultimate foundations is actually
called off and the groundlessness of our believing is realized, the pressure for solving the Trilemma is thereby
lifted. If we no longer require beliefs to be founded upon other beliefs, a presupposition of Foundationalism, we
also give up the presuppositions of the Trilemma (Kern 2006, p.75).

20 Wittgenstein's metaphor involves the idea of it being a kind of mythology, in which the river-bed of thought may shift (§95, 97)
It is however interesting to note a peculiar fact stemming from this kind of anti-foundationalism: Wittgenstein's
answer was that certainty and knowledge rely on a certain system that revolves around certain proposition,
certainties, upon which everything else turns. Even doubt can only happen in such a system, hence why the
Trilemma is present when this system is a Foundationalist one. However one can actually ask about the status of
these hinges; we need to remember that they can change over time, they can offer different language games, and
that what once was out of the threat of skepticism, it can actually come, when other hinges are at work, under
skeptical scrutiny (Wittgenstein 1969, §96, 97). What does it exactly mean when we are barred from doubting
hinges, can we claim certainty and knowledge upon them? We can surely make such claims when they are not
hinges anymore, but Wittgenstein's take on the matter seems to head in the direction that if we cannot doubt hinges,
we can't talk of knowing them either. This is because we would need a rational support in order to make
knowledge-claims upon them, and we saw that this cannot be the case, as we need to presuppose already the truth
and certainty of what we are trying to demonstrate. Moore's propositions, when abstracted from their particularity,
express these very hinges, and Wittgenstein is adamant in conceding to Moore that he knows them. Duncan
Pritchard has observed how the non-epistemic status of hinges is compatible with the epistemic status of the
propositions that originate from them (Pritchard 2012, p.269). In particular what is recognized is the logical
relationship between very broad statements such as “the world exists” and something that can be derived from
them such as “I am therefore right now living in this world and writing on this laptop”, however we cannot form a
belief or a doxastic attitude on the hinge proposition itself by this relationship, because our rational believing the
latter sentence presupposes the arational trust in the former.
As Pritchard remakrs, such a structure of reason is not entirely anti-skeptical; indeed, it seems to concede to the
skeptic some crucial arguments. While Cartesian Skepticism can still be actually defeated, because in the anti-
foundational view we exposed these doubts fail on their own premises, skepticism regarding justification can still
be alive in its questioning how can we regard the system we inherited, the arational backdrop we move in, as
something groundless and be entitled in making rational assumption from it. More simply put: why this system and
not another? Does anti-foundationalism open the doors to mere relativism? Are pragmatic reasons enough to justify
us in its use? It can be easy to see how even though anti-foundationalism tries to undercut Agrippa's Trilemma, the
skeptic could still raise against it the trope of circularity (as in a system, we pick up things we already found in our
path) or the trope of assumption (taking such and such propositions to be hinges and undubitable instead of others).
Indeed, we saw that our commitment to this background of hinges cannot be entertained fruitfully in our doxastic
reasoning, otherwise we'd be making Moore's mistake, but we do form beliefs on the existence of the world, reality
and object. Isn't placing some propositions out of the route traveled by inquiry and labeling them as groundless
something either unwarranted or offering no truth-conductive certainty, hence falling again to either Assumption or
mere Circularity?
Wittgenstein's thought has been read as having a number of encounter with relativism, but it would be hard to
argument that he did not retain a sufficiently solid conception of certainty and knowledge; the things he criticized
were the ways this conception is usually thought to be obtained. However his proposal seem to imply that many
more options to those available to us can be entertained; his discussion of different belief and justification systems
in On Certainty is quite extensive.
One suggestion that has came out in the nineties, first with Robert Fogelin, and that now others seem to be able to
entertain, is that the kind of anti-foundationalism we pictured here can be as a matter of fact interpreted as a kind of
Skepticism; not of the Cartesian, Academic or Agrippan kind, but rather of the Pyrrhonian variant. Pyrrhonian
skepticism does not negate the truth of everyday propositions, doesn't trade in universal doubt (Pritchard 2011,
p.199) rather it applies a piecemeal doubt in order to suspend judgment and to attain a detached, therapeutic stance
on our beliefs, language games and backdrops to uncover their presuppositions, dogmatisms and unquestioned
assumptions. This endeavor is obtained by the Equipollence Method (Isostheneia) we already briefly mentioned,
that is, to each system of reasoning, belief and justification, to hold up an opposing system, to put one against
another the various beliefs we hold and the way they can be differently justified and held as true, or even simpler,
what does it make a certain belief-system more truth-conductive than another. Its objective is to attack the claims to
truth, certainty and rationality that each belief system tries to impose on every other, while not falling prey to the
same theoretical loads that lie on the Cartesian Skeptic's shoulders:

A central difference between Cartesian Skepticism and traditional Pyrrhonian skepticism is that Cartesian
Skepticism, but not Pyrrhonian Skepticism, deals in strong negative epistemic evaluations. For example
taking claims to perceptual knowledge as their target, Cartesian Skeptics typically present arguments
purporting to show that perception cannot provide us with knowledge of the external world. The Pyrrhonian
skeptic makes no such claim … No Pyrrhonian who knows his business would accept the burden of
establishing such a claim (Fogelin 2004, p.162).

Fogelin connects this kind of sensibility to the one found in On Certainty and in the kind of anti-foundationalism
that it proposes; he observes that skeptical doubts arise when the epistemological inquiry is relentlessly pursued,
and metaphysically heavy claims are made as in Moore's Proof, while Wittgenstein's anti-foundationalism
illustrates how we both a) do not need such a pursuit and b) if carried out thoroughly it can bring to the whole
edifice of knowledge falling down (ibidem, p.164). We do not need such a pursuit because if a theory of knowledge
has to deal with the potentially unlimited range of defeaters that could, would and will be raised, then only
skepticism will ensue, without any explanation of how we do justify knowledge-claims (Fogelin 2000, p.48), as
Wittgenstein explained, our justifications do come to an end, even though it is not the end foundationalism would
require and even thought this end is groundless and could shift its content and meaning. This is in line with the
Pyrrhonian Skeptical position that asks for always entertaining possible critical stances upon our belief systems,
without actually denying ordinarily held beliefs, as accordingly, Pyrrhonian doubt does not attack “common,
innocently held beliefs, but the beliefs of dogmatic philosophers and other 'professors' who engaged in dogmatic
enterprises of a similar kind” (ibidem, p.43) 21. The kind of anti-foundationalism we have been investigating
recognize the need for a different structure of reasons than that put forth by foundational approaches; Pyrrhonism
would not deny that Moore has two hands, if such an assertion would be entertained with a low theoretical load.
Moore's move trespasses this everyday dimension and aims at obtaining proof of very general, very theoretically
loaded statements, hence committing dogmatic assumptions. Moore's moves, and those of foundationalists alike,
commit the mistake of thinking that

21 Interestingly, another champion of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, namely Hegel, held it in higher esteem than Cartesian or Humean Skepticism
as its goal was exactly to attack commonly held beliefs. Even though these conceptions of it seem in opposition, there is actually far more
common ground between them than what appears initially
 The success of our local practices of offering reasons, which never raise the more general question about the
ultimate structure of reasons, lead us to believe that such rational autonomy is at least possible. Wittgenstein's
claim, in contrast, is that it is impossible. This generates an epistemic angst, or, as I prefer to call it these
days, an epistemic vertigo … I want to suggest that this limited form of skepticism that is generated by the
Wittgensteinian account of the structure of reasons shares some important themes with Pyrrhonian skeptical
doubt (Pritchard 2011, p.198)

This is indeed what can be obtained from the anti-foundationalism we have been dealing with; the recognition of
the groundlessness of our believing acts in a twofold direction: it opposes the dogmatic, often implicit theoretical
and metaphysical load hidden in everyday propositions that often leads us to unwarranted claims about the nature
of certainty, justification and knowledge. It also gives us the ground to consider the system we already move into as
subject to possible changes; we shan't be troubled by such worries however, as this anti-foundationalist, almost
quietist stance, can help us retain a solid conception of what justification and certainty is while not tolerating any
metaphysical emphasis we would like to place on top of them (Wittgenstein 1969, §482).
In conclusion, while anti-foundationalism, in its recognition of the groundlessness of our believing can undercut
the radical skeptical position, it does retain a lot of another form of skepticism, one directed against the implicit,
dogmatic assumptions hidden in our theorizing, philosophizing and in our epistemological endeavors in general. As
Wittgenstein often remarked, his philosophy had the aim to show the way out of the bottle, out of the theoretical
problems that are brought upon us by unwarranted claims and quests.

References
1. Bonjour, Laurence (1985) – The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Harvard University Press
2. Conant, James (2012) – Two Varieties of Skepticism, in Abel, G., Conant, J., eds. Rethinking Epistemology,
Vol. 2, De Gruyter 2012
3. DePaul, Michael (2011) – Foundationalism, in Bernecker, S., Pritchard, D. eds. The Routledge Companion
to Epistemology, Routledge 2011
4. Elgin, Chaterine (2014) – Non-Foundationalist Epistemology: Holism, Coherence, and Tenability, in Steup,
M., Turri, J., Sosa, E., eds., Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Second Edition 2014, Wiley-
Blackwell
5. Fogelin, Robert (2000) – Contextualism and Externalism: Trading in One Form of Skepticism for Another,
in Philosophical Issues 10, Skepticism, pp.43-57
6. Fogelin, Robert (2004) – The Skeptics Are Coming! The Skeptics Are Coming!, in Sinnot-Armstrong, W.,
ed. Pyrrhonian Skepticism, Oxford University Press
7. Howard-Snyder, Daniel & Coffman, E.J (2006) – Three Arguments Against Foundationalism: Arbitrarity,
Epistemic Regress and Existential Support, in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 36:4, pp.535-564
8. Kern, Andrea (2006) – Quellen des Wissens. Zum Begriff vernünftiger Erkenntnisfähigkeiten, Suhrkamp
Verlag
9. Klein, Peter (1999) – Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons, in Philosophical
Perspectives 13, pp.297-325
10. Pappas, George (2014) - Internalist vs. Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification, in Zalta, E. ed.,
 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition) URL=
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/justep-intext/>
11. Pollock, John & Cruz, Joseph (1999) – Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Second Edition, Rowan and
Littlefield.
12. Pritchard, Duncan (2011) – Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism, in Machuca, D., ed., Pyrrhonism in Ancient,
Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, Springer Verlag 2011
13. Pritchard, Duncan (2012) – Wittgenstein and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, in Synthese 189, pp.
255-272
14. Sellars, Wilfrid (1956) – Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, in Id. Science, Perception and Reality,
Ridgewiew 1963
15. Smithies, Declan (2014) – Can Foundationalism Solve the Regress Problem? In Neta, R. ed., Current
Controversies in Epistemology, Routledge 2014
16. Sosa, Ernest (1980) – The Foundations of Foundationalism, in Nous, Vol.14, No.4, Special Issue on
Epistemology, pp.547-564
17. Van Cleve, James (2014) – Why Coherence is not Enough: a Defence of Moderate Foundationalism, in
Steup, M., Turri, J., Sosa, E., eds., Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Second Edition 2014, Wiley-
Blackwell
18. Williams, Michael (1977) – Groundless Belief: an Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology, II° Edition
1999, Princeton University Press
19. Williams, Michael (1988) – Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism, in Mind 97 (387),
pp.415-439
20. Williams, Michael (2001) – Problems of Knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Epistemology, Oxford
University Press
21. Williams, Michael (2005) – Why Wittgenstein Isn't a Foundationalist, in Moyal-Sharrock, D., Brenner, W.,
eds. Readings of Wittgenstein's On Certainty, Palgrave
22. Williams, Michael (2009) – The Tortoise and the Serpent. Sellars on the Structure of Empirical Knowledge,
in deVries, W. ed., Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid
Sellars, Oxford University Press 2009
23. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969) – On Certainty, Blackwell
24. Wright, Crispin (2004) – Scepticism, Certainty, Moore and Wittgenstein, in Coliva, A., Picardi, E. eds.
Wittgenstein Today, Il Poligrafo