Regress problem

The regress problem (or infinite regress) is the philosophical challenge that any justification, explanation, or grounding must itself be justified, leading to an unending chain of demands that never reaches a secure foundation. In epistemology, it threatens to undermine the possibility of knowledge; in ethics, it undermines the possibility of ultimate moral justification; in governance, it produces the paradox that every accountability mechanism requires its own accountability. The standard responses — foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism — each trade on a different intuition about when the demand for further justification should stop.