[lbo-talk] Butler

[Voyou]

On Sun, 2008-06-08 at 07:22 -0400, Ted Winslow wrote:
> This misses the point which was that the claim that there are no  
> rational foundations for belief implies that it's not possible to
> find  
> rational foundations for believing that HIV/AIDS is not caused by  
> witchcraft and, therefore, can't be prevented by murdering
> "witches,"  
> i.e. it implies that there are no rational foundations on which to  
> base the conclusion that the belief that it is and can be is mistaken.

This is true, but tautological - if knowledge has no foundations,
obviously there are no rational foundations for the belief that HIV
can't be prevented by murdering witches. But that's not very
interesting. It's only interesting if finding rational foundations would
be the only way we could know that HIV can't be prevented by murdering
witches; but there are plenty of post-foundational epistemologies that
give reasons for rejecting certain beliefs and accepting others. Why is
it so important that these reasons be foundational ones?