Fumerton has argued for a classical
internalist form of
foundationalism in which foundationally justified beliefs are justified non-inferentially. Specifically, Fumerton believes that for a belief to be non-inferentially justified, it must be justified by
direct acquaintance with facts and the correspondence between those facts and the belief in question. Fumerton's foundationalism is classical or "old-fashioned" in that it claims that foundationally justified beliefs are beliefs about one's states of mind rather than beliefs about the external world. Given this fact, Fumerton has argued that we cannot have the philosophical assurance required for knowledge about the external world. He has also argued for a "principle of inferential justification" that states that for a subject
S to be justified in believing a proposition
P on the basis of another proposition
E,
S must be justified in believing that
E and they must be justified in believing that
E makes
P probable. A theory of rationality attempts to provide the conditions
C under which a belief or decision is rational. Fumerton's puzzle arises when candidate conditions are met, but an agent rationally believes that they are not met. Assuming that the agent believes that
C must be met for their belief or decision to be rational, then in this case they would rationally believe that their belief or decision is irrational even though it satisfies the conditions
C. When paired with the idea that it is irrational to have a belief or make a decision if one rationally believes that it is irrational, this implies that a belief or decision can be irrational even if
C are satisfied. But this means that
C are not sufficient conditions for rationality, implying that finding such conditions is impossible. == Publications ==