How must our knowledge be systematically organized in order to justify our beliefs? There are two options—the solid securing of the ancient foundationalist pyramid or the risky adventure of the new coherentist raft. For the foundationalist like Descartes each piece of knowledge can be stacked to build a pyramid. Not so, argues Laurence BonJour. What looks like a pyramid is in fact a dead end, a blind alley. Better by far to choose the raft.

Here BonJour sets out the most extensive antifoundationalist argument yet developed. The first part of the book offers a systematic exposition of foundationalist views and formulates a general argument to show that no variety of foundationalism provides an acceptable account of empirical justification. In the second part he explores a coherence theory of empirical knowledge and argues that a defensible theory must incorporate an adequate conception of observation. The book concludes with an account of the correspondence theory of empirical truth and an argument that systems of empirical belief which satisfy the coherentist standard of justification are also likely to be true.

• Contents 
• Preface
• PART ONE 
• A Critique of Empirical Foundationalism
• 1. 
• Knowledge and Justification
• The traditional conception of knowledge
• The concept of epistemic justification
• The epistemological task
• 2. 
• Foundationalism: The Main Conception
• The epistemic regress problem
• The varieties of foundationalism
• A basic problem for foundationalism
• 3. 
• Externalist Versions of Foundationalism
• The basic idea of externalism
• Some counter-examples to Armstrong's view
• A basic objection to externalism
• Some externalist rejoinders
• Arguments in favor of externalism
• 4. 
• The Doctrine of the Empirically Given
• The idea of the given
• Schlick on the foundation of knowledge
• Quinton's conception of empirical intuition
• Lewis on the given
• An appeal to the a priori
• PART TWO 
• Toward a Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge
• 5. 
• The Elements of Coherentism
• The very idea of a coherence theory
• Linear versus nonlinear justification
• The concept of coherence
• The Doxastic Presumption
• The standard objections
• 6. 
• Coherence and Observation
• An initial objection
• A suggestion from Sellars
• Coherentist observation: an example
• The justification of the premises
• Introspection
• 7. 
• Answers to Objections
• Answers to standard objections (I) and (II)
• Some further objections
• A restatement of the coherentist account
• 8. 
• Coherence and Truth
• The problem: justification and truth
• Realism and the correspondence theory of truth
• The metajustificatory argument
• Skeptical hypotheses
• APPENDIX A. 
• A Priori Justification
• The concept of the a priori
• Is there a priori knowledge?
• Is there synthetic a priori knowledge?
• The idea of a priori intuition
• APPENDIX B. 
• A Survey of Coherence Theories
• The positivists
• Idealism: Blanshard
• Lehrer's subjectivistic coherence theory
• Rescher's pragmatic coherence theory
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index