Fundamentalism

Notes

Fundamentalism is a theory in which a belief is only as strong as the belief it is built upon, which means somewhere down the line there has to be a single undisputable belief that is the foundation for all the beliefs built upon it. This is in contrast with Coherentism which claims that the strength of a belief is in it's connection to other beliefs, i.e it's the network that matters, not individual beliefs.

The idea came from Rene Descartes who tried to rid himself of all illusions and beliefs that can't be proven, such as whether I am awake or am i dreaming, am i seeing the world through clear eyes or biases, and this endeavor resulted in the famous quote cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am, meaning that our thoughts indicates that we exists as people, even if everything else in our life is an illusion, even if we are just a brain in a vat in the matrix.

One of the challenges of fundamentalism stems from issues with the matter of Truth itself. How can something be proven? How can we, as biological animals who can't escape their Subjective Reality can have a guaranteed way of finding an objective proof of something?

While it sounds tempting and very logical that all beliefs are only as strong as their foundation, which resonates with mathematical proofs, it is very difficult to do the same in the world of humans, beliefs, values and thoughts.

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Overview

🔼Topic:: Epistemology (MOC) ↩️Origin:: Rene Descartes (philosopher) 🔗Link::