Coherence in Science: A Social Approach

Philosophical Studies 179 (12):3489-3509 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Among epistemologists, it is common to assume that insofar as coherence bears on the justification of belief, the only relevant coherence relations are those _within_ an individual subject’s web of beliefs. After clarifying this view and exploring some plausible motivations for it, we argue that this individualistic account of the epistemic relevance of coherence fails to account for central facets of scientific practice. In its place we propose a social account of coherence. According to the view we propose, a scientist _S_’s belief that _p_ is _prima facie_ unjustified if this belief negatively coheres with justified scientific claims in her scientific community. This account of coherence yields an epistemology for scientific belief which, we argue, has all of the benefits and none of the liabilities of its more individualistic predecessor.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Coherence and correspondence in medicine.Thomas G. Tape - 2009 - Judgment and Decision Making 4 (2):134-140.
Must Understanding Be Coherent?Kareem Khalifa - 2016 - In Stephen Grimm, Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.), Explaining understanding: new perspectives from epistemology and philosophy of science. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 139-164.
On the Truth-Conduciveness of Coherence.William Roche - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S3):647-665.
Inconsistency: The coherence theorist’s nemesis?Mylan Engel - 1991 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1):113-130.
Formal models of coherence and legal epistemology.Amalia Amaya - 2007 - Artificial Intelligence and Law 15 (4):429-447.
Diachronic Coherence and Radical Probabilism.Brian Skyrms - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):959-968.
The accuracy-coherence tradeoff in cognition.David Thorstad - forthcoming - British Journal for Philosophy of Science.
Cohering with.Erik J. Olsson - 1999 - Erkenntnis 50 (2-3):273 - 291.
Is a coherence theory of understanding possible?Victor Gijsbers - 2015 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 30 (1):53.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-06-21

Downloads
55 (#259,880)

6 months
17 (#107,227)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Kareem Khalifa
University of California, Los Angeles
Sanford Goldberg
Northwestern University

References found in this work

The structure of empirical knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Epistemology and cognition.Alvin I. Goldman - 1986 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Knowledge in a social world.Alvin I. Goldman - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.
True Enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2017 - Cambridge: MIT Press.

View all 66 references / Add more references