THE VIENNA CIRCLES ANTIFOUNDATIONALISM

Thomas E. Uebel has recently claimed that, contrary to popular opinion , none of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists were proponents of epistemological foundationalism. According to the considerations of the current discussion, however, Uebel's conclusion is erroneous, especially with respect to the work of Moritz Schlick. T he chief reason Uebel offers to support his conclusion is that current attempts to portray Schlick's epistemology as foundationalist fail to overcome its 'ultimate incoherence'. In contrast, it is argued that c urrent interpretations, based on the unpublished as well as the publis hed record, provide understandings of Schlick's foundationalist episte mology as not only coherent, but plausible. In closing, Uebel's own tr eatment of Schlick's work, which purports to show that the most feasib le candidates for foundational statements are 'meaning-theoretic' clar ifications of the content of expressions, itself fails to accurately r epresent Schlick' a own characterizations, and pictures Schlick's epis temology as a confused mix of epistemic and semantic insights.