A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DESCARTES’ BASIC BELIEFS AND CHISHOLM’S SELF-PRESENTING THESIS

Traditionally, knowledge is classified as “Justified True Belief†but for the problem of infinite regress, Descartes came up with an indubitable foundation upon which he believes secured knowledge could be established. There were several incursions of epistemological problems associated with the justification of foundationalism and many versions ranging from the classical to coherentism and foundherentism eventually emerged, but, none was without its embedded problems. Chisholm however came up with a version of foundationalism, a development over Cartesian foundationalism, based on the principles of self-presenting to solve the problem of infallibility and indubitability. The “self-presenting†is an improved version of the Cartessian basic beliefs. Therefore, this paper attempts a comparative analysis of the Cartesian basic beliefs and Chisholm’s “self-presenting†thesis using the philosophical analytical and conceptual methods to determine how successful Chisholm has been in his exploit.Â