Teaching Theory of Knowledge

5. Coherentism

      Coherence theories of epistemic justification have enjoyed in recent years an increase in sophistication and a resurgence in popularity. Coherence theories, in general, hold that whatever degree of justification a proposition or belief has for a person it has in virtue of certain relations it bears to other things which that person believes. A belief is justified, then, only if it coheres in some specifiable way and to some specifiable degree with the body of other beliefs accepted by the believer. Certain features of coherence theories set them apart from other accounts of justification such as foundationalism and reliabilism. For example, coherentists reject the view that some propositions or beliefs are in any degree "self-warranted", i.e., that they enjoy some degree of justification independently of the relations they bear to other beliefs. Moreover, coherentists generally maintain that something which is not a belief cannot, by itself, confer any justification upon a proposition or a belief. Neither sensory states alone, nor the fact that a belief is the product of a reliable belief-forming process, can confer justification, according to the coherentist.

      Keith Lehrer's Knowledge (1974) and Laurence BonJour's The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (1985) are two of the most systematic attempts to present and defend some form of the coherence theory. Many sympathetic treatments of coherence theories contain arguments against other accounts of justification; the papers listed below by Ernest Sosa and William Alston contain responses to some of the main argumenB advanced by coherentists against foundationalism. Sosa's paper also contains a critical examination of the traditional arguments in support of coherence theories. A critical survey of various coherence theories can also be found in John Pollock's Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (1986).

Readings

Alston, W. "Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?" Philosophical Studies 29 (1976). 287-305.

BonJour, L. "The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge." Philosophical Studies 30 (1976), 281-312. Reprinted in Moser, (ed.), Empirical Knowledge. Rowman and Littlefield, 1986. Hereafter cited as 'Moser'.

BonJour, L. "Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?" American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978), 1-13. Reprinted in Moser.

BonJour, L. "The Elements of Coherentism." Chapter 5 of The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Harvard, 1985, 87-110.

BonJour, L. "A Survey of Coherence Theories." Appendix B. ibid., 1985.

Firth, R. "Coherence, Certainty and Epistemic Priority." Journal of Philosophy LXI No. 19, 545-57. Reprinted in Chisholm and Swartz, (eds.), Empirical Knowledge, Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Kornblith, H. "Beyond Foundationalism and the Coherence Theory." In H. Kornblith, (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology, Bradford Books, MIT Press,1986.

Lehrer, K. Knowledge, Oxford, 1974. See chapters 7 and 8. (Chapter 8 is reprinted in Pappas, G. and Swain, M., Essays on Knowledge and Justification. Comell, 1978).

Lehrer, K. "Coherence and the Racehorse Paradox." In French et. al., (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vo1. 5. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1980.

Lehrer, K. and Cohen, S. "Justification, Truth and Coherence." Synthese 55 (1983), 191-207. In Moser, P. and vander Nat, A. (eds.), Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Hereafter cited as 'Moser and vander Nat'.

Lehrer, K. "The Coherence Theory of Knowledge." Philosophical Topics, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (1986), 5-25.

Pollock, J. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. Totowa: Rowman and Allenheld, 1986.

Pollock, J. "A Plethora of Epistemological Theories." In Pappas, G. (ed.), Justification and Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel 1979, 93-113.

Quine, W. V. and Ullian, J. S. The Web of Belief (2nd ed.). New York: Random House, 1978.

Sosa. E. "The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in Theory of Knowledge." In French et. al., (eds.), op. cit. (1980), 3-27. Reprinted in Moser, and in Moser and vander Nat.