Is coherentism inconsistent?

Southwest Philosophical Studies 33:84-90 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Can a perceptual experience justify (epistemically) a belief? More generally, can a nonbelief justify a belief? Coherentists answer in the negative: Only a belief can justify a belief. A perceptual experience can cause a belief but cannot justify a belief. Coherentists eschew all noninferential justification—justification independent of evidential support from beliefs—and, with it, the idea that justification has a foundation. Instead, justification is holistic in structure. Beliefs are justified together, not in isolation, as members of a coherent belief system. The main question of the paper is whether coherentism is consistent. I set out an apparent inconsistency in coherentism and then give a resolution to that apparent inconsistency.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Coherentism and Inconsistency.William Roche - 2011 - Southwest Philosophy Review 27 (1):185-193.
Consciousness, experience, and justification.Harold Langsam - 2002 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (1):1-28.
Two Dogmas of Coherentism.Daniel Kalpokas - 2012 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 85 (1):213-236.
Coherentist Justification and Perceptual Beliefs.Anna Ivanova - 2015 - Balkan Journal of Philosophy 7 (2):107-114.
Coherentism, truth, and witness agreement.William A. Roche - 2010 - Acta Analytica 25 (2):243-257.
Knowing how to believe with justification.Steven L. Reynolds - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 64 (3):273-292.
Coherentism and Belief Fixation.Erik Krag - 2015 - Logos and Episteme 6 (2):187–199.
The Isolation Objection to Coherence Theories of Justification.Muhammad Ali Poodineh - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 19 (73):128-151.
Coherentism.Peter Murphy - 2006 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-03-02

Downloads
315 (#77,794)

6 months
45 (#101,438)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

William Roche
Texas Christian University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

There is immediate justification.James Pryor - 2013 - In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Blackwell. pp. 181--202.
Human knowledge and the infinite progress of reasoning.Peter Klein - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 134 (1):1 - 17.
The mystery of direct perceptual justification.Peter Markie - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 126 (3):347-373.
The Basic Nature of Epistemic Justification.Earl Conee - 1988 - The Monist 71 (3):389-404.

Add more references