The Structure of Justification
5
The Structure of Justification
Now a truth can come into the mind in two ways, namely, as known in itself, and as known through another.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae IA. Q.84, A.2
When really pressed, we never anywhere or at any time use any test [for truth] but one. Coherence is our sole criterion of truth.
Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought
Constructing a coherence theory of justification without making use of basic apprehensions is not unlike recording your new song by taping other recordings without ever having given a live performance.
Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3rd ed.
1—Introduction
In the previous three chapters, we have looked at the nature of knowledge and rationality, at various skeptical challenges to knowledge and justified belief, and at the different sources and views about the scope of knowledge and justified belief. In all three chapters we had occasion to mention the epistemic notions of justification and justified beliefs, and we have seen at least two things about them. First, people do, in fact, have justified beliefs in many areas of cognitive activity. Second, justification is a normative concept, a concept that has to do with positive epistemic appraisal. If we say that a belief has justification, then we say something positive about it from an epistemological point of view. And most likely, justification is a necessary condition for knowledge. In this chapter, we shall look more deeply at the structure of justification and justified beliefs by focusing on the debate between foundationalist and coherentist theories of justification. After a few introductory remarks, we will clarify and evaluate foundationalism and coherentism in that order.
The term noetic structure stands for the entire set of propositions that some person, S, believes, together with the various epistemological relations that obtain among those beliefs themselves (e.g., some beliefs—that apples are red—entail other beliefs—that apples are colored), plus the relations among S himself and those beliefs (e.g., S accepts some beliefs on the basis of other beliefs). Foundationalism and coherentism are normative theories about how a noetic structure ought to be structured such that the beliefs in that structure are justified for the person possessing that structure.
We all accept some beliefs on the basis of accepting other beliefs. Sarah hears a rustling sound outside due to the movement of leaves on her tree. She realizes that a wind is blowing. Her belief that there is a wind blowing is based on and justified by her belief that the leaves are rustling. This second belief is indirect, that is, it is justified mediately through or by means of the first belief. Now we may ask, What is it that justifies the belief that a wind is blowing? Is it another belief? Or is it a sensory experience—the hearing of a sound?
In general, suppose P, Q, and R are three beliefs accepted by some person and suppose P is justified on the basis of Q, and Q on the basis of R. We call a chain of beliefs like P, Q, and R where P is justified on the basis of Q, and Q on the basis of R an epistemic chain. Now what should we say about R and its justification? Four major options suggest themselves.
First, R could be justified by S, S by T, and so on. Most philosophers do not accept this option because it seems to exhibit a vicious infinite regress. Second, a person could simply stop the chain of justification with R and say that R is merely an unjustified, brute faith assumption. Again, most philosophers have looked unfavorably at this alternative. Why? The justification for P and Q ultimately rests on the justification for R. How can R justify P and Q if R itself has no justification and is merely a brute posit? It cannot. Third, one could stop with R and say that, somehow, R itself is justified but not on the basis of some other belief. Perhaps R is self-evident or produced in a reliable way or grounded in a sensory experience but not in a perceptual belief. This is the strategy adopted by foundationalists. Fourth, one could form a circle of justification by asserting that R is justified by P, or form a web of justification by claiming that P, Q, and R all justify each other in a mutually supporting pattern of interaction. This is the coherentist perspective.
Foundationalists and coherentists differ on these questions and hold competing views about the nature of noetic structures that exhibit justified beliefs. For the foundationalist, epistemic chains of justification stop with beliefs that are not justified on the basis of other beliefs. For the coherentist, the only thing that justifies a belief is other beliefs, specifically, the fact that the belief in question “coheres with” other beliefs in the right way.
Before we look more deeply at these two schools of thought, we need to make a distinction between a sensation and a belief. Not all philosophers agree here, but according to one traditional account, a sensation is a nonpropositional experience possessed by an experiencing subject. If a person has a red sensation, then the person is appeared to in a red-type way. The person has a certain sensory property within his consciousness, namely, being-an-appearing-of-red. Sensations do not contain beliefs or, put somewhat differently, simple seeing does not require seeing as or seeing that. If one sees a red apple, then one has a sensation-of-red, that is, is appeared to in a red-type way. If one sees the object as red, then one possesses the concept “being red” and applies it to the object of perception. Finally, if one sees that this is a red apple, then one accepts the proposition that (and thus has the perceptual belief that) this object is a red apple. In order to have a sensory experience of something, one need not have concepts or propositions in one’s mind. By contrast, a belief includes the acceptance of a proposition and is the way something seems to a subject when he thinks about the belief in question. According to a traditional view, sensations are not propositional; beliefs are.
2—Foundationalism
In one form or another, foundationalism has been the dominant theory of epistemic justification throughout most of the history of Western philosophy. Current advocates of some form or another of foundationalism include Roderick Chisholm, Robert Audi, and Alvin Plantinga. Foundationalist theories are distinguished by the notion that all knowledge rests on foundations. More specifically, the foundationalist notes a fundamental division between those beliefs we justifiably accept on the evidential basis of other beliefs (e.g., the belief that the wind is blowing is evidentially based on the belief that the leaves are rustling) versus those we justifiably accept in a basic way, that is, not entirely on the basis of the support that they receive from other beliefs.
2.1 Exposition of Foundationalism
For the foundationalist, all beliefs are either basic or nonbasic. Basic beliefs are, somehow, immediately justified. All nonbasic beliefs are mediately justified in some way by the relationship they sustain to the basic beliefs. For example, the belief that 13 × 12 = 156 is nonbasic and justified by other beliefs (e.g., 2 × 3 = 6) that are basic and immediately justified. The metaphor of a pyramid has sometimes been used to picture foundationalism. Just as upper regions of a pyramid are supported by lower regions and, ultimately, by the foundation, which is not supported by other parts of the pyramid, so nonbasic beliefs are related to basic, foundational ones. With this brief sketch of foundationalism in mind, let us look more carefully at some of the details of foundationalism.
2.1.1 Proper Basicality and the Foundations
To begin with, according to foundationalism, there are beliefs that are called properly basic beliefs. Such beliefs are basic in the sense that they are not justified by or based on other beliefs. If we use the term evidence to mean “propositional evidence,” then evidence refers to cases in which a person S believes a proposition and this serves as the basis for believing another proposition. A properly basic belief is basic in the sense that it is not believed on the basis of evidence, that is, it is not based on belief in another proposition. Moreover, a belief is proper if and only if it is (1) basic and (2) meets some other condition that specifies why it is proper to take the belief in question as basic. We will look at some of these alleged conditions below, but for now the point is that not just any old belief should be taken as basic but only those for which it is proper to do so.
Second, there is a difference among foundationalists as to which beliefs ought to be placed in the foundations. According to classical foundationalism, only sensory beliefs or beliefs about the truths of reason should be allowed in the foundations. Other foundationalists claim that additional beliefs should be in the foundations as well; for example, certain moral beliefs (e.g., Mercy is a virtue) and theological beliefs (e.g., God exists). Roughly, a truth of reason is one that can be known independently of sense experience, that is, without requiring a sense experience or sensory belief for its justification. Examples are certain truths of mathematics (Necessarily, 2 + 2 = 4), logic (Necessarily, either P or Q, not P, therefore Q), or metaphysics (Necessarily, red is a color). Concerning the last example, one may need to have a sensory experience of redness before one can form the concept of being red required to understand the proposition that necessarily, red is a color. But one does not appeal to a sensory experience to justify the proposition. According to one tradition, foundational truths of reason are justified by rational intuition, roughly, the internal awareness of or insight into the facts that make these propositions true. In these cases, one can simply “see,” that is, rationally intuit, the truth in question.
Moreover, limiting the discussion to sensory beliefs about the external world for a moment, one can draw a distinction between ancient and modern classical foundationalism. Ancient classical foundationalism, embraced by Aristotle and Aquinas, is the view that certain sensory beliefs are evident to the senses and should be taken as foundational, for example, beliefs like “There is a tree before me” or “A red object is there on the table.” Note that these beliefs are about objects that exist in the external world outside the consciousness of the believing subject. Modern classical foundationalism, embraced by thinkers from René Descartes to Roderick Chisholm in the twentieth century, holds beliefs like the following to be in the foundation: (1) I seem to see a tree. (2) I am being appeared to redly. Here, the beliefs are not about external objects, but instead, are about self-presenting properties, that is, psychological attributes (such as sensory states or thinking states) or modes of consciousness within the experiencing subject himself. (1) and (2) are about the way something seems or appears to one from the first-person perspective.
Third, foundationalists differ about how strong the justification is for foundational beliefs. Strong foundationalism is the view that foundational beliefs are infallible, certain, indubitable, or incorrigible. These terms are all attempts to get at the same thing, but they differ somewhat in their meaning. A belief is infallible if it is impossible in some sense for a person to hold to the belief and be mistaken about it. Sometimes the term incorrigible is used in the same way. On other occasions, a belief is incorrigible just in case the person holding the belief could never be in a position to correct it. The notion of certainty has two different senses. Sometimes it refers to a certain depth of psychological conviction with which a belief is held. On the other hand, a belief is sometimes called certain in the sense that at least this must be true of it: accepting that belief is at least as justified as accepting any other belief whatever. Finally, indubitability refers to a feature a belief has when no one could have grounds for doubting the belief in question.
For the strong foundationalist, the point of this family of terms is that for a belief to qualify as foundational it must be as strongly justified as is it could possibly be, and it must exhibit certain “epistemic immunities.” It must be immune to correction, incapable of being doubted reasonably, incapable of being mistakenly believed, and so forth. Weak foundationalists deny that foundational beliefs must have such a strong epistemic status. For them, foundational beliefs must be merely prima facie justified. Very roughly, a belief is prima facie justified for some person just in case that person holds the belief in question and has no good reason to think that he is not justified in doing so; in other words, he has no reason to think that there are defeaters of the belief sufficient on balance to remove his justification for the belief.
Fourth, foundationalists differ regarding the conditions necessary for a basic belief to be counted as properly basic. A foundationalist denies that properly basic beliefs can be based on evidence from other beliefs. But the foundationalist still holds that properly basic beliefs must have some kind of ground, that is, have some basis other than another belief. If a properly basic belief is grounded in some way, then the belief receives positive epistemic support or justification even though there is no evidence for it (no other proposition that serves as the basis for it).
Some foundationalists are internalists; internalism claims that the conditions that ground properly basic beliefs are internal to the knower, for example, the belief is “self-evident” or grounded in a sensory or intellectual experience of some sort. For example, the belief that there is a wind blowing gets evidential support from the belief that the leaves are rustling, but this latter belief is properly basic. It receives no support from other beliefs, but is grounded in a sensory experience, a way of “being appeared to” (in this case, hearing the sound of rustling). The belief that 13 × 12 = 156 received evidential support from the belief that 2 × 3 = 6, but this latter belief is “self-evident”: once one understands the meaning of the proposition, one can simply “see” that it must be true. What is it that one “sees” or experiences in this case? Perhaps it is a certain luster or luminosity, or a certain obviousness that is experienced. Or perhaps it is the felt, irresistible inclination to believe the proposition to be true. In any case, the properly basic beliefs are grounded in something (an experience) within the knowing subject. Other foundationalists are externalists, and externalism claims that the factors grounding the justification of a properly basic belief are not those to which the subject must have internal access: perhaps the belief is caused or reliably produced in a certain way.
2.1.2 The Relationship Between Basic and Nonbasic Beliefs
Three important issues are involved in clarifying foundationalist perspectives about the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs. Let us call this relationship the basing relation (sometimes called the “believed-on-the-basis-of” relation); for example, the belief that the leaves are rustling stands in the basing relation to the belief that there is a wind blowing. First, this relation is irreflexive and asymmetrical. A relation is irreflexive if something cannot stand in that relation to itself. For example, “larger than” is irreflexive since nothing is larger than itself. Applied to beliefs, this means that no belief is based on itself. A self-evident belief is not based on itself, even though it is justified immediately; rather, it is grounded in its experienced luster or obviousness, in the felt, unavoidable inclination to believe it, or in some other way.
A relation is asymmetrical in that, given two things A and B, if A stands in that relation to B, then B does not stand in that relation to A. “Larger than” is asymmetrical. If A is larger than B, B cannot be larger than A. By contrast, “the same size as” is symmetrical since if A is the same size as B, B is the same size as A. Applied to beliefs, this means that if A is the basis for B, then B cannot be the basis for A.
The second issue has to do with the strength of the basing relation, an issue on which foundationalists differ. Historically, some foundationalists claimed that the relationship between a basic and nonbasic belief is one of deductive certainty—the basic beliefs entail the truth of the nonbasic beliefs. However, most foundationalists deny this today and for good reason. Many properly basic beliefs support nonbasic ones without entailing or guaranteeing the truth of those nonbasic beliefs. The belief that the leaves are rustling does not entail the belief that the wind is blowing—the former could be true and the latter false. For this reason, most foundationalists allow for some sort of inductive relation between basic and nonbasic beliefs. Foundationalists have had some difficulty clarifying this relationship precisely.
Third, foundationalists allow the notion of coherence to play a role in justification. Later when we examine coherentism, we will look more carefully at just what coherence is supposed to be, but for now, we note that two roles have been assigned to coherence in foundationalist accounts of the support that nonbasic beliefs get from basic ones. First, coherence plays a negative function. If one’s set of beliefs are incoherent, say they contain a logical contradiction, then that counts against that set of beliefs. For example, if one forms ten perceptual beliefs as one walks around the kitchen table with a red apple on it, and if the first nine express the idea that one seems to see a red object but the tenth expresses the idea that one does not seem to see a red, but a blue object, then this tenth belief does not cohere well with the other nine and that counts against that set of basic beliefs (and more strongly, against the tenth belief itself) serving as a basis for the belief that there is, indeed, a red object on the table.
Second, each member of a set of beliefs can confer some basis on a nonbasic belief, but if an entire set of basic beliefs cohere well with each other, this increases the positive support that those beliefs give to the nonbasic one. For example, each perceptual belief (e.g., one seems to see a red object now) expressed in the example above gives some support to the belief that there is, indeed, a red object on the table. But if all ten express the same notion (and none of the beliefs is that one seems to see a blue object), then the coherence of all ten beliefs increases one’s basis for believing that there really is a red object on the table. Thus foundationalists allow for coherence to play a role in their overall theory of epistemic justification.
2.2 Arguments for Foundationalism
2.2.1 The Role of Experience and Perceptual Beliefs in Justification
Regarding our sensory beliefs about the external world, some foundationalists argue that if we pay careful attention to the way our consciousness actually works and to the way we actually justify many of our beliefs, then it becomes evident that sensory experiences and perceptual beliefs at the periphery of a body of beliefs (those beliefs more closely related to what we experience in sensation) have a privileged epistemic status. Setting aside the issue of whether our beliefs about our own sensations are incorrigible, our sensory experiences and perceptual beliefs just seem to be immediately justified (or grounded) and to justify less basic beliefs. One’s sensory experience of a sound and one’s perceptual belief that he hears a rustling justify the belief that the wind is blowing in a way depicted by foundationalism. Coherentism allows no room for experience itself to contribute to the justification of our beliefs (since coherentists claim that beliefs and beliefs alone are what confer justification), and coherentism cannot account for the special role perceptual beliefs (such as the belief that one hears a rustling) or sensory experiences play in justification.
Coherentists respond to this point in at least three ways. First, most coherentists deny the myth of the given, that is, the idea that facts are directly present or “given” to consciousness in a preconceptual, prejudgmental way. Put differently, they claim that all perception is theory laden and that there is no seeing without seeing as or seeing that. However, in spite of this claim, it does seem that we can see things directly. One can be aware of a bird flying overhead and not notice it due to being preoccupied with exam preparation, but later recall the experience to memory and the awareness of the bird can serve as justification for the belief that one saw the bird earlier. Or so it would seem. In any case, the theory-ladenness of perception is a point of debate between some foundationalists and coherentists.
Second, coherentists claim that whatever is taken to immediately justify a belief (e.g., a sensory experience or perceptual belief) can do so only if a person has an argument justifying the idea that the alleged immediate factor has what it takes to function as an immediate justifier. Thus, since the justification of the alleged immediate factor requires this higher or meta-level justification, the original factor is not immediately justified but mediately justified by some sort of meta-level argument. For example, before the experience of a sound or the perceptual belief that one hears a rustling can be justified and the justifier of the further belief that the wind is blowing, one must have an argument that the former are, in fact, functioning in this way. Foundationalists respond that there is no sufficient reason to think that this meta-level justification is required to justify what appears to be an immediate justifier of a belief. A sensory experience or perceptual belief can justify a nonbasic belief (e.g., that the wind is blowing) without the person having to stop first and construct an argument for the fact that this is what is occurring.
Third, some coherentists claim that as a matter of psychological fact, sensory experiences are possible without having beliefs, otherwise infants or various kinds of animals (or adults in certain circumstances, as in the bird case above) could not have sensory experiences without first having beliefs, and this seems absurd. The beings just mentioned do not clearly have beliefs at all but surely seem to have sensory experiences. Nevertheless, say some coherentists, the existence of sensory experiences without perceptual beliefs is only a psychological fact and not an epistemological one. That is, psychologically speaking, experiences may exist temporally prior to beliefs, but epistemologically speaking, experiences do not serve to ground or confer justification on beliefs.
Foundationalists respond to this third coherentist claim in two ways. First, foundationalism seems to be a theory of justification that is more congruent with the way our sensory and belief-forming processes actually work than is coherentism, and surely this counts against coherentism. Since sensations can occur temporally and psychologically prior to perceptual or less basic beliefs, then if a theory of justification—in this case, foundationalism—appropriates this fact in its theory of justification, all things being equal, this counts in favor of that theory. The psychological priority of sensory experience to perceptual beliefs is ad hoc in a coherence theory of justification, foundationalists argue, but it fits naturally in a foundationalist view. Second, foundationalists argue that a major reason coherentists are forced to admit the existence of sensory experiences without beliefs is the fact that such an admission is a better reflection of the way our subjective lives present themselves to us. But a careful description of our subjective lives will contain something else too: the fact that those sensory experiences often serve to ground our perceptual beliefs. The coherentist arbitrarily stops taking account of our subjective lives when it is convenient to do so.
2.2.2 Truths of Reason
Foundationalists also argue that certain types of a priori knowledge, specifically, our knowledge of self-evident truths of reason, fit well into foundationalism and not coherentism. Examples include our knowledge that necessarily 2 + 2 = 4 or that necessarily if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, then A is taller than C. In cases like these, people are justified in believing them without that justification coming from some other things they believe. These truths are “self-evident,” and the justification for them is immediate. People can simply “see” that they are necessary truths once they understand them, perhaps by being aware of a certain obviousness or of their strong, felt inclination to believe them. This argument has been especially difficult to answer for coherentists. As a result, a popular coherentist response is to adjust his or her coherentism by limiting it to sensory knowledge and by not including knowledge of certain truths of reason.
2.2.3 The Regress Argument
To understand the regress argument, recall the epistemic chain mentioned earlier in the chapter where the belief that P is based on the belief that Q, which in turn is based on the belief that R. There are only four options available for understanding such a chain, and the first two are clearly inadequate: the vicious regress option (where R is based on S, S on T, and so on to infinity) and the brute posit option (where the regress is stopped with R, taken as an unjustified brute posit accepted by blind faith). This leaves only two alternatives: foundationalism (where R is taken as basic—justified, but not on the basis of a further belief) and coherentism (where R is based on P or on mutual coherence relations among P, Q, and R). But, argue foundationalists, coherentist treatments of epistemic chains turn out to be viciously circular, and thus the only reasonable way to construe such chains is the foundationalist way.
But why should one think that coherentism is viciously circular? To understand the foundationalist argument here, it may be helpful to focus our attention on cases where A causes the existence of B. Let us refer to this as a case in which A stands in a causal relation to B. Now such a causal relation is irreflexive. A cannot cause itself because this would require A to exist prior to its own existence in order to cause its existence, and that is absurd. It is also asymmetrical. If A causes B, then B cannot cause A because B cannot cause A to exist unless B already exists. But B cannot exist without A causing it to do so; thus A would be causing B to cause A or, in short, A would cause itself to exist, and that is absurd. Now if the causal relation is irreflexive and asymmetrical, then it must be noncircular, that is, if A (one’s hand moving) causes B (the moving of the broom) and B causes C (the moving of the dirt), then C cannot cause A because this would really amount to the claim that A had some role in causing itself.
Now the epistemic relation called “the basic relation” (P is believed on the basis of or justified by the belief that Q) is irreflexive and asymmetrical as well. Thus at least some coherentist versions of justification are viciously circular because in asserting that P is based on Q and Q on R, and R on P, the coherentist implicitly asserts that each belief is at least partly based on itself. In this way, we see that the foundationalist notion of a basic perceptual belief or sensory experience is a sort of epistemological “unmoved mover”: it confers justification on other beliefs without needing justification to be conferred on it by something else. Later in the chapter we will examine coherentism in more detail, and we will look at coherentist attempts to circumvent this argument.
2.3 Arguments Against Foundationalism
2.3.1 Incorrigibility of the Foundations
The main objection to classical foundationalism is the claim that there simply are no incorrigible (or infallible, certain, indubitable) beliefs. Critics of strong foundationalism cite ways that alleged incorrigible beliefs could turn out to be corrigible or fallible and use these counterexamples to argue against the existence of incorrigible beliefs.
Foundationalists respond to this strategy in two different ways. First, some foundationalists accept the criticism and adopt weak foundationalism, which takes basic beliefs to be prima facie justified and not incorrigible. The essence of foundationalism is the existence of properly basic beliefs and the asymmetry between basic and nonbasic beliefs, not the degree of strength possessed by properly basic beliefs. Thus the debate between foundationalism and coherentism is not primarily a debate about the existence of incorrigible beliefs.
Second, other foundationalists attempt to respond to the arguments and reassert the existence of incorrigible beliefs. In order to understand this dialogue, suppose one has a red sensation, that is, one is appeared to redly. Now, if the person reflects on his own sensory experience and believes that he is being appeared to redly, then if such a belief is incorrigible, he is being appeared to redly. In general, if being R is a self-presenting property (e.g., being appeared to redly), if person S is R (e.g., S is appeared to redly), and if on that ground S believes himself or herself to be R, then it is incorrigible for S that he or she is R.
Recall that a self-presenting property is a psychological attribute, a mode of consciousness, a property of a first-person mental state. Sensory properties are self-presenting. In the statement above, R could be a red sensory experience or, more precisely, the property of having-a-red-image or, preferably, being-appeared-to-redly. Thus, if person P is being appeared to redly, and if, grounded in this sensory state, P believes himself to be appeared to redly (e.g., he reflects on his own sensation and forms this belief), then it is incorrigible (infallible, etc.) for S that he is, in fact, being appeared to redly.
The idea here is that one can know one’s sensory states incorrigibly. But this idea needs to be qualified, for there do seem to be certain sources of error here. For example, one can have a false belief about a present sensation if one’s memory is poor and he groups it with past sensations in the wrong way. Thus one may mistakenly compare his present red sensation with past orange sensations, and mistakenly believe (due to poor memory) that this is a sensation like those (orange) sensations. In this and other ways, one could use the wrong word (orange) to report the present sensation to others.
Second, one could have a sensation in his visual field and, due to preoccupation and inattention, fail to notice it and later deny having had the sensation. In this case, one has a vague awareness of a sensation, perhaps, a clear sensation. Third, one can have a clear awareness of a vague sensation that serves as a source of error. Thus one could be aware of a person at 150 yards and mistakenly believe that his sensation is of his friend Bill due to the fact that the person and his face appear vague and undefined to the perceiver. Fourth, one can have a very complex sensation, taken as a whole, that can be a source of error because some of one’s beliefs about the whole sensation require the use of memory. Thus one can be aware of twenty-four dots on a wall, but report that his sensation is one by means of which only twenty-two dots appear to him. In this case, he must count the dots in his visual field, so he is actually having a number of different sensations as he counts each dot and he is holding past sensations of counted dots in his memory to finish the count. An error could occur due to a mistake in memory.
Now the strong foundationalist can admit all of this but still ask, if we limit ourselves to whole sensations that are simple enough to be present before the mind in their entirety in one simple act of noticing (such as a state of being appeared to redly taken by itself), can one be mistaken about this if one believes oneself to be appeared to redly and one’s belief is grounded in that appearance? Perhaps, but it is hard to see how. Critics offer certain counterexamples that purport to show that one can be mistaken in these cases. For example, some argue that before one’s belief that one is being appeared to redly can have any content to it, one or both of two things must be true. First, one must have a general conception of what it is for something to be a red sensation derived from comparing one’s current sensation with similar ones in the past, and then go on to judge that the present sensation fits the class of red sensations accurately. Second, before one’s belief that one is being appeared to redly can have any content, one must have mastered language (e.g., one knows how to use the terms “being appeared to,” “red,” and so forth) because people can think only in language. And surely, the critic continues, one cannot report to others what one’s sensation is unless one uses language. Either way, there are sources of error because one can always use language in a mistaken way.
Both of these arguments seem to be mistaken. First, before one can be aware of what a current sensation is or have a belief about it, that person does not first have to compare it with other sensations for two reasons. For one thing, this idea (that before one can have a justified belief about one thing, for example, one’s current sensation, one must have justified beliefs about two other things, for example, other sensations similar to this one and the judgment that this present sensation falls into a certain class of sensations) leads to a vicious infinite regress of justification and fails to allow for what for many people would be an obvious fact: that one can be directly and simply aware of some things and form beliefs about them without making comparative judgments at all. For another thing, this idea has the correct order backward. Before one can form classes of sensation based on memory and similarity judgments (e.g., the class of all red sensations), one must first be able to be aware of and form beliefs about individual sensations.
Regarding the second argument about language, it mistakenly assumes that people must think in language. But this does not seem to be the case. People often experience themselves to be thinking rapidly without any sensory signs flying through their minds, and infants and other creatures seem to be able to think without having acquired a language. Moreover, if people could not think without a language, how could someone ever enter into a language to learn it in the first place? Finally, we must distinguish between having a true belief about my present sensation (which, arguably, can be incorrigible) versus using language to tell someone else about the sensation (which, through misreporting or other sources of error listed above, can be mistaken). The two are different things.
Another counterexample to incorrigibility is this: Suppose a brain physiologist located that part of the brain associated with a person’s being appeared to redly and could use a reliable machine to monitor that part of the brain. Now suppose the person believed he was being appeared to redly but the brain monitor indicated otherwise. In this case, couldn’t the person be mistaken and thus have a corrigible belief about his current sensation? In response, it could be pointed out that this argument begs the question. If such a belief is incorrigible, the brain physiologist should not continue to insist that the person was not having a red sensation. After all, his monitor was developed by correlating brain readings with first-person reports as to what sensations a subject was having while his brain was doing such and such. Thus the reliability of the monitor is based on the justification of first-person reports in the first place. If it is used to undercut the authority of first-person reports, this, in turn, undercuts its own reliability.
In sum, the arguments against incorrigibility are not conclusive, but philosophers are divided about this issue. But even if there are no incorrigible beliefs, all that follows is that strong as opposed to weak foundationalism is in trouble.
2.3.2 All Perception Is Theory Laden
This argument amounts to the claim that all perception is theory laden, that there is no seeing without seeing as or seeing that, and thus there are no basic sensory experiences, no uninterpreted data, nothing merely “given” to consciousness. Further, all perceptual beliefs and, indeed, all beliefs whatever involve a theoretical interpretation of some sort. From this, two things follow. First, no perceptual beliefs are immune from error since theories can be changed and interpretations corrected, at least in principle. Second, theories are, among other things, coherent webs or networks of interrelated beliefs. Since perceptual beliefs are really part of theoretical networks, they get their support from their coherence with other beliefs in a theory. This means that such beliefs are not basic, as the foundationalist supposes.
We have already looked at the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception in this chapter. The important thing to note here is that the issue is closely related to the foundationalist-coherentist debate, the former denying and the latter affirming the theory-ladenness of all perception.
2.3.3 The Transfer of Justification
Finally, coherentists claim that foundationalists have not clarified the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs in a way that explains how the former transfer justification to the latter. Moreover, the actual beliefs in the foundations are too slim in number and content to serve as a sufficient floor for constructing the edifice of all the things we are justified in believing. For these reasons, foundationalism must be rejected.
Regarding the first objection, foundationalists have, indeed, had some difficulty clarifying the relation between basic beliefs (e.g., a number of beliefs of the following sort formed while walking around a table: I am being appeared to redly now) and nonbasic ones (e.g., there is a red apple on the table). The relation is not deductive (the former could be true and the latter false) nor are nonbasic beliefs reached by enumerative induction. For example, one does not take an inductive sample of, say, a thousand cases of having a red sensation where there was actually a red object and go on to claim that, probably, there is a red apple now before one on the basis of (1) one’s current red sensation and (2) the frequency with which such sensations are, indeed, correlated with external objects of perception. And while foundationalists continue to work on this problem, the best thing they can say at present is that coherentists fare no better on this score due to various ambiguities in trying to clarify the notion of “coherence.” We will look at this shortly.
Regarding the second objection (that the actual beliefs in the foundation are too slim in number or content to serve as an adequate basis for justification), it is beyond the scope of this chapter to deal with this problem. But foundationalists must work out detailed theories of justification in which it becomes plausible to suggest that the foundational beliefs are, in fact, sufficient as a ground on which to build the edifice of justification. And some foundationalists, such as Robert Audi and Roderick Chisholm, believe they have already done so.
3—Coherentism
3.1 Coherentism Explained
Our treatment of coherentism can be briefer than our discussion of foundationalism because many of the issues have already surfaced. There are several versions of coherentism that differ from one another in one way or another, but the essence of coherentism lies in the fact that there are no asymmetries between basic and nonbasic beliefs. All beliefs are on a par with each other, and the main, or more likely, sole source of the justification of a belief is the fact that the belief appropriately “coheres” with the other beliefs in one’s noetic structure. Important coherentists have been F. H. Bradley, Brand Blanshard, and, more recently, Keith Lehrer and Nicholas Rescher.
As we have stated it, coherentism is a theory about epistemic justification. But there are two other types of coherentism that are often, though not always, associated with coherence theories of justification. First, there are coherence theories of belief or meaning. These are theories that claim, in one way or another, that the content of a belief, the thing that makes a belief what it is, is the role the belief plays in an entire system of beliefs. This position is sometimes called the holist theory of meaning. Second, there are coherence theories of truth, roughly, the notion that a proposition is true if and only if it is part of a coherent set of propositions. This theory of truth contrasts with the correspondence theory of truth, roughly, the notion that the truth of a proposition is a function of its correspondence with the “external” world. Theories of truth will be mentioned later in this chapter and in chapter six, but for now it should be pointed out that one could consistently hold to a coherence theory of justification and a correspondence theory of truth. Our concern at the moment is with the former, and we need to characterize it in more detail.
3.1.1 Coherentism and the Doxastic Assumption
The doxastic assumption (from the Greek doxa, “belief”) refers to the view that the sole factor that justifies a belief for a person is the other beliefs that the person holds. So understood, coherentists (at least strong coherentists; see below) accept the doxastic assumption. Sensory experiences (e.g., being appeared to redly) themselves serve no role in grounding beliefs, even perceptual beliefs, and, in general, a belief acquires no justification whatever from its relationship to experience. Nor do externalist factors like the proper functioning of one’s sensory faculties play a role in justification. Only a belief or set of beliefs can confer justification on another belief. This means, among other things, that all versions of coherentism are internalist theories, whereas foundationalist theories can be either internalist or externalist in orientation.
3.1.2 No Asymmetries Between Basic and Nonbasic Beliefs
For the coherentist, there is no basic, privileged class of beliefs (e.g., those expressing perceptual beliefs such as I am being appeared to redly now) that serve as a foundation for justifying other beliefs but that need no justification from other beliefs. Our noetic structure does not (or should not) have such asymmetries in it. If the pyramid is a metaphor for a foundationalist picture of a good noetic structure, many think that a raft is a metaphor for a coherentist picture. Moreover, all sensory experiences are theory laden and thus turn out to be perceptual judgments, not nonpropositional ways of being appeared to. In one’s overall set of beliefs, there may be those closer to the periphery of experience than others, but this is just a matter of degree, not of difference in kind.
3.1.3 The Nature of Coherence Itself
The basic idea here is that what justifies a belief is the way it “coheres” with other beliefs in one’s noetic structure. A better way to put this is to say that a belief is justified for a person just in case the belief is a member of a coherent set of beliefs for that person. Justification is primarily a feature of individual beliefs; coherence is a feature, not of individual beliefs, but of an entire set of beliefs taken as a whole. For example, if a person wonders how he knows that the wind is blowing, he could say that the leaves are rustling. If asked how he knows that, he could respond that he knows that he hears the leaves rustling, and further, he knows that he hears leaves rustling because the wind is in fact blowing. Here, each belief is justified by being a part of a coherent set of beliefs.
Coherentists have been divided about their views as to just what coherence itself amounts to. In this way, they are like foundationalists who have been divided about the best account of the justification relation between basic and nonbasic beliefs. Almost all coherentists agree that coherence must at least mean logical consistency, that is, a set of beliefs cannot explicitly or implicitly contain contradictory propositions, P and ¬ P. But this alone is not enough. A person could believe that he was Napoleon, that everyone else denied he was Napoleon, but that they all were conspiring to lie. This would be a logically consistent set, but hardly one that confers justification on the members of the set.
Different coherentists have added further conditions on what coherence must include. One candidate has been entailment coherence: a set of beliefs is coherent only if each member of the set is entailed by all the other members of the set. Another, more popular candidate is called explanatory coherence: each member of a set of beliefs helps to explain and is explained by the other members of the set. As a set of beliefs grows in size, the coherence of the set (and thus the justification of each member of the set) increases as the mutual explanatory power among the beliefs in the set grows in quality and strength. Still another candidate is called probability coherence: a set of beliefs is coherent only if it does not include the belief that P and the belief that P is improbable.
3.1.4 Varieties of Coherence Theories
Finally, a taxonomy of coherence theories will include different versions of coherentism. First, there is positive and negative coherentism. According to the former, if a belief coheres with a set of beliefs, then that provides positive justification for the belief. Here, positive reasons are required before a belief can be justified, and coherence provides that justification. According to negative coherentism, if a belief fails to cohere with a set of beliefs, then the belief is unjustified. Here, beliefs are innocent until proven guilty; that is, they are justified to some degree unless they fail to pass the test of coherence.
Second, there is weak and strong coherentism. Weak coherence theories imply that coherence is but one determinant of justification, and thus weak coherentism is compatible with versions of foundationalism that allow coherence to play a role in justification. Strong coherence theories assert that coherence is the sole determinant of justification; this version of coherentism will be evaluated shortly.
Finally, there is a difference between linear and holistic coherentism. According to linear coherentism, beliefs are justified by other individual beliefs (or small sets of belief) in a linear, circular chain. Thus P justifies Q, Q justifies R, and so on in a single, inferential line until a loop is completed. If the loop is rich and large enough, it confers justification on its members. Holistic coherentism affirms that in order for some person S to be justified in believing P, P must be in a coherent relation with the set of all of that person’s beliefs. It is the entire pattern of interlocking, mutual coherence that provides justification.
3.2 Coherentism Evaluated
We have already encountered most of the main arguments for coherentism in our evaluation of foundationalism. In fact, much of the support for coherentism lies in the alleged failure of foundationalism, coupled with the view that coherentism is the only viable alternative: the denial of basic beliefs and of the asymmetry between basic and nonbasic beliefs, the inadequacy of the foundations to support all that people are justified in believing, the weaknesses in foundationalist accounts of the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs, the theory-ladenness of all perception, and so on. In addition to this essentially negative argument for coherentism, coherentists are convinced about the correctness of their account of how it is that people actually go about justifying their beliefs. Coherentists claim that if we pay careful attention to the way beliefs are justified, the correctness of coherentism becomes manifest.
In spite of this claim, a number of serious criticisms have been raised against strong coherence theories of justification. These criticisms tend to cluster around three main issues. First, there is an objection that focuses on the vicious circularity and implausibility of coherence views of the transfer of justification from one belief to another. Consider linear positive coherentism. On this view, the transfer of justification proceeds in a linear circle: P justifies Q, Q justifies R, and so on until the loop is closed with Z justifying P. The problem here is that the loop is viciously circular and implausible.
Regarding vicious circularity, recall what was said earlier in the chapter in this context. The basis relation is like the causal relation: both are irreflexive (A cannot cause or be the basis of itself) and asymmetrical (if A causes or is the basis of B, then B cannot cause or be the basis of A). But this means that no belief can be the basis of itself in whole or in part, and this is what linear positive coherentism requires. P justifies a chain (R, S, . . . , Z), and that chain in turn justifies P. But the chain cannot justify P if it is not justified. Thus R through Z justify P because P justifies them, and in this sense, P helps to justify itself. And the same will be true of other members of the chain.
Moreover, such a circle of justification is not only viciously circular but also implausible in its treatment of perceptual beliefs. Suppose Frank sees that a red apple is on the table and believes this to be so. The foundationalist could justify this by referring to Frank’s belief that he is being appeared to redly, which, in turn, is grounded in the fact that he is, indeed, having the perceptual experience in question. But the coherentist must justify Frank’s belief about the apple by looping back up to higher-order beliefs (those farther away from Frank’s immediate experience); for example, ordinary physical object beliefs (that a table has been in the room for a long time, that a friend placed an apple on the desk an hour ago, that the lighting in the room is normal, that no one else has come into the room since then, etc.), which are, in turn, based on other ordinary physical object beliefs (tables don’t disappear randomly, no one usually takes one’s furniture, when a friend brings an apple, he doesn’t come back later and take it home). Or the coherentist can justify Frank’s belief about the apple by reference to a second-order belief that he believes the red apple is there.
Now the problem with these strategies is that they are implausible as accounts of how the belief is actually justified, namely, by reference to Frank’s present experience of the apple being on the table. Coherentists respond to this charge by denying that experiences themselves can ground a belief because all sensations are theory laden and only beliefs can justify other beliefs. But the point of the objection here is to show that this notion of justification simply seems implausible in light of what people actually find to be the justifying factors in their ordinary perceptual beliefs.
What about the problem of vicious circularity? Coherentists respond to this problem in at least two ways. First, some claim that if a circle of justification is small, then circularity is, indeed, vicious. But if the circle is large and contains a lot of members in the loop, then circular justification is not problematic. However, this assertion fails as an argument. It may be a psychological fact about us that if a circle of justification is large enough, people will not be bothered by it because they will not become aware of the circularity and its inadequacy. But the problem of viciousness, rooted in the irreflexive, asymmetrical nature of the relation by which justification is transferred, is present in small or large loops.
A second response is to abandon linear positive coherentism and adopt holistic coherentism. On this account, coherentism is a view, not about the transfer of justification, but about its source. That is, the essence of coherentism is the idea that the mutual, holistic coherence among the beliefs in a web of beliefs is the source that confers justification on those beliefs. Coherentism is not primarily a view about how that justification, once is it present due to coherence, is transferred from one belief to another. However, even if holistic coherentism avoids the problem of circularity, it still suffers from implausibility due to an important factor: it does not allow for sensory experience or reason (in the case of knowledge of truths of reason as in logic and mathematics) to contribute to the justification of our beliefs. The fact that one is appeared to redly or that one can simply see that 2 + 2 = 4 does seem to play a crucial role in justification, in spite of what coherentism implies. In short, there are sources of justification besides coherence.
This leads us to a second major objection to coherentism: the isolation problem. There are several closely related difficulties that are usually associated with this problem. For one thing, some have argued that coherence theories cut justification off from the external world and the way that world really is. Justification is solely a function of the internal relations among beliefs in one’s noetic structure (their coherence), and thus justification has nothing to do with anything outside one’s set of beliefs (as does one’s sensory experiences), such as the external world or truth, which is a relationship between our beliefs and that external world. Since the objective of justification is to give us knowledge of that external world, then if coherence theories leave us cut off from that world, they must be inadequate theories of justification.
Coherentists have responded to this problem in one of three ways. First, some have abandoned a correspondence theory of truth and have added a coherence theory of truth to a coherence theory of justification. Here, truth is not a correspondence relation between a proposition and the external world. Instead, to say that a proposition is true is to say that it is a member of a set of coherent propositions. And just as coherence can be a matter of degree (a set of beliefs can be more or less coherent), so truth is a matter of degree. The reason that justification gives us truth is that both are to be understood in terms of coherence. As our beliefs become more and more justified, due to their being members of increasingly more coherent sets of beliefs, we come closer to true beliefs because the truth of a belief is a matter of its being a member of a coherent set of beliefs. We cannot evaluate this response here. Theories of truth will be discussed in chapter six. But if truth itself does not come in degrees and if the correspondence theory of truth is superior to the coherence theory, then this response is inadequate.
A second response by some coherentists claims that the notion of a theory-independent world or of there being something called “the way the world is,” available from a God’s-eye perspective, is incoherent. Our only notion of an “external” world or of “the way the world is” is one that reduces to the idea of “the way the world is in a given theory or set of beliefs.” There is no single way the world is; there are only different worlds in different theories. Thus the theory-world distinction ultimately breaks down. This response denies a realist view that there is, in fact, a world independent of theory (mind, language). We will consider this issue more fully in chapter eight.
Finally, some coherentists respond that the external world does, in their view, influence our beliefs about that world in that our beliefs are caused by “inputs” from the external world, for example, wavelengths impinging on our sensory organs. Thus the external world does not play a role in justifying our beliefs, but it does play a causal role in producing and influencing the beliefs we actually have. The problem with this response is that it leaves no room for the external world—for example our direct awareness of that world—to play a rational role in justifying our beliefs, and it is this role that is of relevance to epistemology.
This last remark leads to a second difficulty related to the isolation problem: coherentism leaves no room for experience or other factors (e.g., the trustworthiness of our sensory and cognitive equipment) to play a role in justification since beliefs and beliefs alone are relevant to justification. For the coherentist, the justification of a belief is solely a function of the coherence of that belief with other beliefs. If one holds the same set of beliefs in two different circumstances, then any belief he holds will have the same degree of justification even if sensory experiences or factors outside the believing subject change drastically. This means, among other things, that coherentists cannot supply the criteria needed to distinguish between coherent illusions that do not have justification (e.g., coherent fairy tales, dreams, or dysfunctional, hallucinatory sets of beliefs) and equally coherent sets of beliefs that do have justification. Thus coherence is not sufficient for justification.
Here are two examples cited by Alvin Plantinga that show the insufficiency of coherence theories of justification:
Oliver Sacks recounts the case of the Lost Mariner, who suffered from Korsakov’s syndrome, a profound and permanent devastation of memory caused by alcoholic destruction of the mammillary bodies in the brain. He completely forgot a thirty-year stretch of his life, believing that he was 19 years old when in fact he was 49; he believed it was 1945 when in fact it was 1975. His beliefs (we may stipulate) were coherent; but many of them, due to this devastating pathology, had little or no warrant. . . .
Finally, consider the Case of the Epistemically Inflexible Climber. Ric is climbing Guide’s Wall on Storm Point in the Grand Tetons; having just led the difficult next to last pitch, he is seated on a comfortable ledge, bringing his partner up. He believes that Cascade Canyon is down to his left, that the cliffs of Mount Owen are directly in front of him, that there is a hawk gliding in lazy circles 200 feet below him, that he is wearing his new Fire rock shoes, and so on. His beliefs, we may stipulate, are coherent. Now add that Ric is struck by a wayward burst of hi-energy radiation. This induces a cognitive malfunction; his beliefs become fixed, no longer responsive to changes in experience. No matter what his experience, his beliefs remain the same. At the cost of considerable effort his partner gets him down and, in a desperate last-ditch attempt at therapy, takes him to the opera in nearby Jackson, where the New York Metropolitan Opera on tour is performing La Traviata. Ric is appeared to in the same way as everyone else there; he is inundated by wave after wave of golden sound. Sadly enough, the effort at therapy fails; Ric’s beliefs remain fixed and wholly unresponsive to his experience; he still believes that he is on the belay ledge at the top of the next to last pitch of Guide’s Wall, that Cascade Canyon is down to his left, . . . and so on. Furthermore, since he believes the very same things he believed when seated on the ledge, his beliefs are coherent. But surely they have little or no warrant for him. The reason is cognitive malfunction; his beliefs are not appropriately responsive to his experience.
There is a third difficulty related to the isolation problem, called the plurality objection. There could be two or more equally coherent sets of beliefs that could, nevertheless, be logically incompatible with each other. A schizophrenic person who thinks he is John the Baptist could have a set of beliefs equally coherent with those of his therapist. In this case, the coherentist would have to say that the beliefs in each set are equally justified, but surely this is not the case. Only one set of beliefs is true, and it would seem that only one set contains justified beliefs, namely, those of the therapist.
Besides vicious circularity and the isolation problem, some have raised difficulties against the notion of coherence itself, claiming that it is either inadequate or too unclear to be satisfactory. Space does not allow for an analysis of these problems, and in any case, the same claim has been made against foundationalist treatments of the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs. In our view, foundationalism is a better view of epistemic justification than is coherentism, but the reader will have to reach his or her own conclusions about this issue.
4—Virtue Epistemology
In part five, we will examine various ethical systems and discover that most of them (e.g., utilitarianism, deontological theories) focus on discerning the correct moral rules and right and wrong moral acts. The moral agent himself is left out of the picture. But one very important ethical system—virtue ethics—backs away from making moral rules and actions its primary focus. Instead, its primary concern is to clarify the nature of the good person and the sorts of virtues and character traits that characterize such a person. And a right act is one that is done by a good person with a developed set of properly ordered virtues. In the same way, foundationalism and coherentism focus on the structure of justification and try to discern correct epistemic rules and beliefs. But virtue epistemology zeroes in on the notion of an intellectual virtue and the sort of virtues that characterize a rational agent. Thus a justified or warranted belief would be one produced by a virtuous knower when exercising his epistemic virtues properly. Intellectual virtues are those qualities and capacities of a good thinker or knower. We may think of them as habits that perfect the intellect for the proper, effective consideration of truth. Current virtue epistemologists think of intellectual virtues either as reliable or truth-conducive cognitive faculties (e.g., vision, hearing, memory, introspection) or as good intellectual character traits like attentiveness, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage. Accordingly, there are two main varieties of virtue epistemology.
Reliabilist or faculty-based virtue epistemology. On this view, intellectual virtues are qualities that help to maximize one’s surplus of truth over error—for example, memory, perception, introspection, intuitive reason. These virtues are identified with various faculties that exhibit them, and the faculties count as intellectually virtuous because they are epistemically reliable—thus the approach is known as virtue-reliabilism or faculty-based virtue epistemology. One problem for this approach is the difficulty of accounting for “high-grade knowledge.” Virtue reliabilists hold that a true belief is knowledge only if its high epistemic status is explainable in terms of a proper exercise of the knower’s reliable faculties. For example, such an account seems to work for one’s knowing that the sun is shining. One has this knowledge only if this belief is true and its high epistemic status for the knower is explainable in terms of the reliable functioning of his visual faculties. But consider the task of forming true beliefs that are less mundane and, in fact, quite difficult to acquire, for example, about subatomic particles, the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, or certain sorts of theological knowledge. In many of these cases, knowledge will be credited to a subject not in terms of his clear vision, good hearing, and so forth. Rather, knowledge will be credited on the basis of persistent curiosity, hard work, open-mindedness, intellectual honesty, and so forth. These qualities—not the knower’s cognitive faculties—will explain why the person has knowledge.
Responsibilist or character-based virtue epistemology. On the view of responsibilist or character-based virtue epistemology, intellectual virtues are likened to moral virtues, for example, as good intellectual character traits such as attentiveness, fair-mindedness, intellectual tenacity, and honesty. These intellectual virtues are aimed at epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding. So understood, intellectual virtues are character traits of a responsible knower. Whereas reliabilist theories tend to treat the goal of human cognition as little more than the acquisition of true beliefs about the external world, responsibilists tend to focus on a richer set of cognitive goals such as knowledge and understanding, insight and wisdom. One problem with this approach is that various forms of knowledge seem to be achieved quite independently of exercising or even possessing intellectual virtues, for example, immediate knowledge of one’s own mental states or perceptual knowledge of one’s surroundings.
Virtue epistemology is an interesting development in the last few decades of epistemic reflection, and it remains to be seen just how predominant it will become in the future.
Chapter Summary
The debate between foundationalism and coherentism is primarily focused on different normative views about a noetic structure. Foundationalists distinguish between basic and nonbasic beliefs. Properly basic beliefs are those basic beliefs not justified by other beliefs, even though they can be grounded in some other way. There is an asymmetry between basic and nonbasic beliefs, and the basing relation is irreflexive and asymmetrical. Different versions of foundationalism include strong and weak foundationalism. Foundationalists offer at least three main arguments for their view: the role of experience and perceptual beliefs in justification, the basic nature of certain truths of reason, and the regress argument. Coherentists attack the incorrigibility of the foundations, a thesis central to strong foundationalism; many coherentists claim that all perception is theory laden, and they criticize foundationalist views of the transfer of justification.
Coherence theories of justification accept the doxastic assumption—the view that the sole factor that justifies a belief for a person is other beliefs. Moreover, coherentists deny the asymmetry between basic and nonbasic beliefs. Third, coherentists differ over the nature of coherence itself, with logical consistency, entailment, explanatory power, and probability being among the most popular views. Finally, there are different versions of coherentism, including linear and holistic coherentism. Much of the support for coherentism lies in the alleged inadequacies of foundationalism and the superiority of coherence views of how our beliefs are actually justified. Foundationalists claim that coherence theories, at least positive linear ones, are viciously circular, that all coherence theories are implausible accounts of how at least perceptual beliefs are justified, and that coherence theories leave no room for sensory experiences to play a positive epistemological role in justification. Foundationalists cite the isolation problem and the plurality objection as difficulties for coherence theories. Finally, virtue epistemology has developed in the past few decades, and can be subdivided into reliabilist or faculty-based and responsibilist or character-based versions.
Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts
ancient classical foundationalism
asymmetrical
basic belief
basing relation
belief
certain
character-based virtue epistemology
classical foundationalism
coherence theories of belief (meaning)
coherence theories of justification
coherence theories of truth
coherentism
correspondence theory of truth
doxastic assumption
entailment coherence
epistemic chain
evidence
explanatory coherence
externalism
faculty-based virtue epistemology
foundationalism
foundations
ground
high-grade knowledge
holistic coherentism
incorrigible
indubitability
infallible
intellectual virtue
internalism
irreflexive
isolation problem
linear coherentism
logical consistency
modern classical foundationalism
myth of the given
negative coherentism
noetic structure
nonbasic belief
plurality objection
positive coherentism
prima facie justified
probability coherence
properly basic beliefs
regress argument
respondence theory of truth
responsibilist virtue epistemology
seeing as
seeing that
self-presenting property
sensation
simple seeing
strong coherentism
strong foundationalism
virtue epistemology
virtue reliabilism
weak coherentism
weak foundationalism