Anti-foundationalism

From Geography

Anti-foundationalism, as the name implies, is a term applied to any philosophy which rejects a foundationalist approach. An anti-foundationalist is one who refuses a vision of knowledge as ' grounded in reality' or as charged with the task of 'reflecting' the world (Rorty, 1979). They do not believe that there is some fundamental belief or principle which is the basic ground or foundation of inquiry and knowledge. Anti-foundationalists use logical or genealogical attacks on foundational concepts, often coupled with alternative methods for justifying and forwarding intellectual inquiry, such as the pragmatic subordination of knowledge to practical action(Wordiq, 2010). Important anti-foundationalist thinkers are Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Anti-foundationalism can be seen as poststructural Gibson-Graham, 2000).

A famous methaphor from Otto Neurath (Vienna Circle) wil clarify this anti-foundationalist thought. In the 1930s, Neurath wrote ( in Thagard & Beam 2010) : There is no way of taking conclusively established pure protocol sentences as the starting point of the sciences. We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials. Only the metaphysical elements can be allowed to vanish without trace. Vague linguist conglomerations always remain in one way or another as components of the ship.

Our ship on open sea must be repaired by workman who, in order to replace any one plank, have to stand on planks which themselves may later have to be replaced (Wordiq, 2010). This means that our new knowledge is often based on old knowledge which can change and disappear over time. So according to anti-foundationalism there is no foundation of knowledge.

There can be thought of many examples with the anti-foundationalist approach. This can also be applied to geographical themes. Nothings is grounded in reality, for example the world. Everytime the word is used it can mean something else, there's no generic meaning for the world. This is what is meant by anti-foundationalsism, it's depended on reflection and can be explained different by different people (Gibson-Graham, 2000).

References

Gibsen-Graham, JK,. (2000) Poststructuralist interventions. In: Theory, Culture and Society. 18 (1) pp. 1-13

Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the mirrow of nature. Priceton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Thagard, P. & C. Beam Epistemological Metaphors and the Nature of Philosophy. Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, Ontario (found on 03-10-2010 at cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/epistemological.html)

Wordiq. Anti-foundationalism. found on 04-10-2010 at www.wordiq.com/definition/Anti-foundationalism

Contributors

Published by Lorenzo Goudsmits (0827991) & Lisanne Dols (0822701)

Edited by Mathijs Lammers