Coherentism

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Coherentism is a type of epistemological theories that try to explain the justification of opinions. The coherentism can be understood as an attempted answer to Agrippa's trilemma (or Munchausen trilemma). The trilemma states that justification necessarily either ends in an infinite regress , or becomes dogmatic or circular.

According to coherentism, opinions are justified if or precisely if they are part of a maximally coherent system of beliefs. Whether coherence is a necessary or necessary and sufficient condition for justification is judged differently. A system can be considered coherent if it does not contain any contradictions (logical consistency) and contains both explanatory and inductive relations, i.e. relationships between statements that enable explanations or conclusions. These relations are analyzed in different ways in different elaborations of coherentism.

The coherentist view is justified as follows: As the number of opinions evoked by observations of the outside world increases, it becomes increasingly unlikely that all of these opinions can be put together in a false, coherent system. If the system is brought into line with as many opinions as possible in constant critical revision, the number of wrong opinions will inevitably decrease in the long term. We would therefore be able to see the coherence of newly acquired opinions on the system of our other convictions as evidence of their correctness, even if we could never establish absolute certainty and could not consider the process of the revision to be complete.

The objection to coherentism is that it is just as possible that our system of beliefs is isolated from the real world and reinforces itself, or that several different, equally coherent systems are possible and we lack a decision criterion. The Cartesian skepticism would reduce the chances of the falsity of the most coherent system such as with an intended deception. Illustrate , for example, by an evil demon, but also simply by propaganda .

Representatives of coherentism are or were, among others, Laurence BonJour , Donald Davidson and Keith Lehrer , but BonJour, for example, is now of a different opinion. An alternative position to coherentism is epistemological fundamentalism .

literature

  • Laurence BonJour : The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge , in: Philosophical Studies 30 (1976), pp. 281-312.
  • Keith Lehrer : Theory of Knowledge , London 1995.
  • Donald Davidson : A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge , in: Ernest LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Oxford 1986.

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