Hey This Is Not Me

Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification
First published Tue Nov 11, 2003; substantive revision Thu Nov 15, 2012
According to the coherence theory of justification, also known as coherentism, a belief or set of beliefs is justified, or justifiably held, just in case the belief coheres with a set of beliefs, the set forms a coherent system or some variation on these themes. The coherence theory of justification should be distinguished from the coherence theory of truth. The former is a theory of what it means for a belief or a set of beliefs to be justified, or for a subject to be justified in holding the belief or set of beliefs. The latter is a theory of what it means for a belief or proposition to be true. Modern coherence theorists, in contrast to some earlier writers in the British idealist tradition, typically subscribe to a coherence theory of justification without advocating a coherence theory of truth. Rather, they either favor a correspondence theory of truth or take the notion of truth for granted, at least for the purposes of their epistemological investigations. This does not prevent many authors from claiming that coherence justification is an indication or “criterion” of truth.

1. Coherentism Versus Foundationalism
2. The Regress Problem
3. Traditional Accounts of Coherence
4. Other Accounts of Coherence
5. Justification by Coherence from Scratch
6. Probabilistic Measures of Coherence
7. Truth Conduciveness: the Analysis Debate
8. Impossibility Results
9. Conclusions
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Coherentism Versus Foundationalism

A central problem in epistemology is when we are justified in holding a proposition to be true. This is a problem because it is not at all evident how epistemic justification should be understood, and classical accounts of that notion have turned out to be severely problematic. Descartes thought that a person is justified in holding something to be true

Bibliography: Akiba, K., 2000, “Shogenji 's Probabilistic Measure of Coherence is Incoherent,” Analysis, 60: 356–359. Angere, S., 2007, “The Defeasible Nature of Coherentist Justification,” Synthese, 157 (3): 321–335. Angere, S., 2008, “Coherence as a Heuristic,” Mind, 117 (465): 1–26. Bender, J. W., 1989, “Introduction,” in The Current State of the Coherence Theory: Critical Essays on the Epistemic Theories of Keith Lehrer and Laurence BonJour, with Replies, J. W. Bender (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer. Blanshard, B., 1939, The Nature of Thought, London: Allen & Unwin. BonJour, L., 1985, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. BonJour, L., 1989, “Replies and Clarifications,” in The Current State of the Coherence Theory: Critical Essays on the Epistemic Theories of Keith Lehrer and Laurence BonJour, with Replies, J. W. Bender (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer. Bovens, L, and Hartmann, S., 2003, Bayesian Epistemology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bovens, L. and Olsson, E. J., 2000, “Coherentism, Reliability and Bayesian Networks,” Mind, 109: 685–719. Bovens, L. and Olsson, E. J., 2002, “Believing More, Risking Less: On Coherence, Truth and Non-trivial Extensions,” Erkenntnis, 57: 137–150. Cleve, J. V., 2011, Can Coherence Generate Warrant Ex Nihilo? Probability and the Logic of Concurring Witnesses, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82 (2): 337–380. Cross, C. B., 1999, “Coherence and Truth Conducive Justification,” Analysis, 59: 186–93. Davidson, D., 1986, “A Coherence Theory of Knowledge and Truth,” in Truth and Interpretation, E. LePore (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 307–319. Dietrich, F., and Moretti, L., 2005, “On Coherent Sets and the Transmission of Confirmation,” Philosophy of Science, 72 (3): 403–424. Douven, I., and Meijs, W., 2007, “Measuring Coherence”, Synthese 156 (3): 405–425. Ewing, A. C., 1934, Idealism: A Critical Survey, London: Methuen. Fitelson, B., 2003, “A Probabilistic Measure of Coherence,” Analysis, 63: 194–199. lass, D. H., 2007, “Coherence Measures and Inference to the Best Explanation,” Synthese, 157 (3): 257–296. Huemer, M., 1997, “Probability and Coherence Justification,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 35: 463–472. Huemer, M., 2007, “Weak Bayesian Coherentism,” Synthese, 157 (3): 337–346. Huemer, M., 2011, “Does Probability Theory Refute Coherentism?”, Journal of Philosophy, 108 (1): 35–54. Kemeny, J. and Oppenheim, 1952, “Degrees of Factual Support, Philosophy of Science, 19: 307–24. Klein, P., and Warfield, T. A., 1994, “What Price Coherence?,” Analysis, 54: 129–132. Klein, P., and Warfield, T. A., 1996, “No Help for the Coherentist”, Analysis, 56: 118–121. Lehrer, K., 1990, Theory of Knowledge, first edition, Boulder: Westview Press. Lehrer, K., 1997, “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge,” Erkenntnis, 50: 243–257. Lehrer, K., 2000, Theory of Knowledge, second edition, Boulder: Westview Press. Lehrer, K., 2003, “Coherence, Circularity and Consistency: Lehrer Replies,” in The Epistemology of Keith Lehrer, E. J. Olsson (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 309–356. Lewis, C. I., 1946, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, LaSalle: Open Court. Lycan, W. G., 1988, Judgment and Justification, New York: Cambridge University Press. Lycan, W. G., 2012, “Explanationist Rebuttals (Coherentism Defended Again),” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 50 (1): 5–20. Moretti, L., 2007, “Ways in which Coherence is Confirmation Conducive,” Synthese, 157 (3): 309–319. Neurath, O., 1983/1932, “Protocol Sentences,” in Philosophical Papers 1913–1946, R.S. Cohen and M. Neurath (eds.), Dordrecht: Reidel. Olsson, E. J., 1999, “Cohering with,” Erkenntnis, 50: 273–291. Olsson, E. J., 2001, “Why Coherence is not Truth-Conducive,” Analysis, 61: 236-241. Olsson, E. J., 2002, “What is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?,” The Journal of Philosophy, 99: 246–272. Olsson, E. J., 2005, Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Olsson, E. J., and Schubert, S., 2007, “Reliability Conducive Measures of Coherence,” Synthese, 157 (3): 297–308. Quine, W. and Ullian, J., 1970, The Web of Belief, New York: Random House. Rescher, N., 1973, The Coherence Theory of Truth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rescher, N., 1979, Cognitive Systematization, Oxford: Blackwell. Roche, W., 2010, “Coherentism, Truth, and Witness Agreement”, Acta Analytica, 25 (2): 243–257. Schubert, S., 2012a, “Coherence Reasoning and Reliability: A Defense of the Shogenji Measure”, Synthese, 187(2): 305–319. Schubert, S., 2012b, “Is Coherence Conducive to Reliability?”, Synthese, 187(2): 607–621. Schubert, S., 2011, “Coherence and Reliability: The Case of Overlapping Testimonies,” Erkenntnis, 74, 263–275. Schupbach, J. N., 2008, “On the Alleged Impossibility of Bayesian Coherentism”, Philosophical Studies, 141 (3): 323–331. Schupbach, J. N., 2011, “New Hope for Shogenji 's Coherence Measure”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 62 (1): 125–142. Shogenji, T., 1999, “Is Coherence Truth-conducive?,” Analysis, 59: 338–345. Siebel, M., 2004, “On Fitelson 's Measure of Coherence,” Analysis, 64: 189–190. Sosa, E., 1980, “The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence Versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5(1): 3–26. Thagard, P., 2000, Coherence in Thought and Action, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Thagard, P., 2005, “Testimony, Credibility, and Explanatory Coherence,” Erkenntnis, 63 (3): 295–316.