foundationalism

is the wrongheaded belief that there is a set of self-evident premises which form the foundations to all knowledge.

A foundationalist believes that in order to avoid the regress inherent in claiming that all beliefs are justified by other beliefs, some beliefs must be self-justifying and form the foundations to all knowledge.

is wrongheaded as a metaphysical claim that knowledge can be justified by by tracing it back to self-evident premises on the one hand, and on the other it is wrongheaded as a claim of philosophy to function foundationally within a culture.

There were two senses of 'foundationalism' criticized in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. In the epistemological sense, Rorty criticized the attempt to justify knowledge claims by tracing them to a set of foundations (e.g., self-evident premises or noninferential sensations)... more broadly, he criticized the claim of philosophy to function foundationally within a culture. The former argument draws on Sellars's critique of the idea that there is a 'given' in sensory perception, in combination with Quine's critique of the distinction between analytic sentences (sentences which are true solely in virtue of what they mean) and synthetic sentences (sentences made true by the world). Each critique, taken alone, provides a problem for a conception of how philosophy ought to proceed, yet leaves enough of the tradition intact to proceed with its former aspirations. Combined, Rorty claimed, the two critiques are devastating. ' (wiki)

foundationalism, n.Definitions

foundationalism