Classical Foundationalism
Overview
Summary
Classical foundationalism is the epistemological thesis that justified belief has a two-tier structure: a set of “basic” beliefs that are self-justifying (self-evident, incorrigible, or immediately evident to the senses) and everything else, which is justified only by inference from those basic beliefs.
Descartes’s cogito, Locke’s empiricism, and much of the Enlightenment project run on this model: knowledge is a building, and you need a foundation that doesn’t itself need support.