When
epistemologists argue against coherentism, they often do so by focusing on
issues that are at best ancillary to the heart of coherentism. Here I focus on two such criticisms. The first is that some argue against
coherentism by suggesting that it fails to provide a role for experiential
input into justification. The second is
coherence is understood holitically, coherentists have no resources to explain
the difference between a properly and an improperly based belief. I argue that these apparently different
criticisms are actually, at bottom, the same, and that they are mistaken
because they mistake the heart of coherentism for particular versions of the
view.
Coherentists'
Distractions
The heart of
coherentism is found in two aspects, one negative and one positive. On the negative side, coherentism is a
contrary of foundationalism, the view that the epistemic status of our beliefs
ultimately traces to, or derives from, basic beliefs. The positive aspect is found in the claim
that the relation of coherence itself is responsible for any positive epistemic
status possessed by beliefs.
Unfortunately,
when epistemologists argue against coherentism, they often do so by focusing on
issues that are at best ancillary. For
example, some argue against coherentism by suggesting that it fails to provide
a role for experiential input into justification. If such criticisms are telling, they are
telling only given the assumption that coherence is a relation solely among
beliefs. Coherentists have agreed that
it is, but if we focus only on the heart of the position described above, it is
not immediately obvious why they have done so.
Other times, an
apparently unrelated difficulty is highlighted.
It is often thought that coherentism is at its best when it comes in
holistic form--that is, when it maintains that it is the entire system of
beliefs that conveys positive epistemic status on any particular belief. The difficulty is that if the epistemic
support relation is entirely systemic in this way, coherentists have no
resources to explain the difference between a properly and an improperly based
belief.[i] On the usual account of the distinction, a
properly based belief is one that is held because of, or on the basis of, the
evidence for it, but if evidence is always systemic, then a properly based
belief will have to be based on the entire system of beliefs, and that is
psychologically implausible.
This worry is
sometimes carried to an extreme. Suppose
one thinks that holistic coherentism is not only the most attractive version of
the theory, but because of the miserable implausibility of any hint of
non-holistic coherentism, the holistic variety is all there is.[ii] If the above criticism is correct, then
coherentists may find themselves in the position of having to maintain that all
warranted beliefs are properly basic.
For if holistic coherentists cannot draw a distinction between properly
and improperly based beliefs, every belief will have automatically survived all
requisite tests for warrant just by cohering with the relevant system. If a belief is properly based when it has
survived all appropriate scrutiny, then all warranted beliefs will be properly
basic, according to coherentism.
Neither criticism
strikes at the heart of coherentism; at least, not obviously. Because of this, one might wonder whether
coherentism as such is threatened by these criticisms, or whether the perceived
difficulties are mere distractions for coherentists. I will argue the latter. The above problems are mere coherentists' distractions
because they focus attention elsewhere than on the important tasks for
coherentists, which are to clarify the nature of coherence and demonstrate the
superiority of coherentism to foundationalism.
More important
and surprising, in spite of the fact that the above criticisms of coherentism
appear unrelated, they are not. They
make precisely the same mistake in appraising the credentials of
coherentism. This mistake traces to the
importance of the regress argument in the history of epistemology. In that argument, one of the premises is that
any non-basic warranted belief must obtain its warrant by some relation to
other warranted beliefs. This point
leads to the assumption that the relations of
warrant impartation is the fundamental relation of interest to
epistemological theory. That is, one
effect of the centrality of the regress argument to the history of epistemology
is a myopic focus on the warrant impartation relation. Whether the imparting of warrant is conceived
of defeasibly or indefeasibly, the focus remains the same: the question of positive epistemic status for
non-basic beliefs turns on questions about the warrant impartation relation
between a particular belief and other warranted beliefs.
My
counterargument is that there are many more relations here than epistemologists
have imagined. That is, there are
relations between beliefs and between experiences and beliefs that are relevant
to the epistemic status of non-basic beliefs, but which are not themselves
relations of warrant impartation. A
simple case arises from the character of defeasible reasoning itself. Suppose believing p defeasibly
warrants believing q; that is, suppose p and q stand in
the relation of warrant impartation from the former to the latter. Suppose further, however, that the transfer
of warrant in a particular case is defeated by some further belief in d. In such a case, p&d do not impart
warrant to q. To complicate
things further, however, suppose that there is a further claim o, which
has the following properties. First, it
is an overrider of defeater d, so that p&d&o imparts
warrant to q. Second, suppose
that o by itself imparts no warrant to q. If so, we have a very simple case of the sort
on which I want to focus. We have a case
in which some claim can be relevant to the warrant of a non-basic belief, but
not in virtue of standing in the warrant transfer or warrant impartation
relation to that belief. It is, of
course, a part of a larger condition which itself stands in that relation, but
the point remains nonetheless that a claim by itself can be relevant to
positive epistemic status without standing in a warrant transfer relation to
that which it helps warrant.
This point is a
simple one, but it is one overlooked by both criticisms of coherentism
above. The objections arising for
coherentism concerning the role of experience in justification and the
importance of proper basing both founder on the possibility of relations that
do not involve warrant impartation but which are nonetheless relevant to
positive epistemic status. One such
relation is discussed above, but there is a more fecund example of such that is
relevant here. The fecundity of this
relation will appear as we see how it undermines both of the above criticisms
of coherentism in one fell swoop.
The relation I
have in mind is J.L. Mackie's concept of INUS conditions, which he uses to
explain causation.[iii] An INUS condition of some event e is
an Insufficient but Non-redundant condition of e which is
part of a larger condition which is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient
for e; according to Mackie, one event is a cause of another if and only
if, roughly, the first is an INUS condition of the second. For example, throwing a baseball at a window
can cause it to break, but not because the throwing is sufficient in any strong
sense for the window to break (an equal and opposite force from the other side
of the pane would have resulted in no damage to the window). Neither is the throwing necessary for the
window to break: the window could have
been broken by a sonic boom, for example.
Yet, there is a larger condition, according to Mackie, including the
absence of contrary forces, of which the throwing of the ball is a
non-redundant component, which is sufficient for the window to break. Hence throwing a baseball causes the window
to break because throwing the ball is an INUS condition of the breaking of the
window.
This relation can
be put to use in epistemology. Using it,
we can distinguish between, for example, something's imparting positive
epistemic status to a particular claim, and that same thing being an INUS
condition for positive epistemic status.
This distinction, I will argue, allows holistic coherentists to clarify
the distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs, and it also allows a
coherentist to appeal to both beliefs and experiences in defining positive
epistemic status. The ultimate lesson is
that expanding the vision of epistemologists regarding the variety of relations
that are relevant to the epistemic status of belief can prevent misleading
appearances concerning the demise of coherentism and rid coherentists of
criticisms which do nothing more than distract coherentists from their proper
tasks, which are to clarify the coherence relation and argue for the superiority
of the resulting theory to other theories of justification or positive
epistemic status. To demonstrate these
points, I begin with the claim that coherence is a relation among beliefs.
Coherentism and the Doxastic
Assumption
Coherentism is
usually understood as a position that maintains that justification or positive
epistemic status is exclusively a function of the relationship between
beliefs. Following John Pollock, I will
call this assumption the Doxastic Assumption; he says this assumption implies
"that the justifiability of a belief is a function exclusively of what
beliefs one holds--of one's "doxastic state"."[iv] As Keith Lehrer puts it, "There is
nothing other than one's belief to which one can appeal in the justification
of belief. There is no exit from the
circle of one's beliefs."[v] Pollock and Lehrer are not alone in their
endorsement of the centrality of the Doxastic Assumption to coherentism, for
both coherentists and non-coherentists have joined together in affirming this
characterization. Yet, it is not obvious why there is such agreement. Coherentists maintain that justification is a
matter of coherence with an appropriate system of information, and one such
type of system is one's doxastic system--that system of information encoded in
one's beliefs. There are other systems
of information, however; systems of information composed of what one's culture
accepts, systems of information involving claims that should have been accepted
but were not, systems of information encoded in mental states of any form
whatsoever. Why should coherentism as
such be forced into restricting systems of information to those encoded in
the form of belief?
Consider Lehrer's
reasons for affirming that claim, for example.
His argument runs as follows:
This [the claim that there is no exit
from the circle of beliefs] might not seem obvious. It might, for instance, seem that one can
appeal directly to experience, or the testimony of others, to justify one's
beliefs. But this is illusory. Sense experience, whether commonly casual or
carefully controlled, always leaves open the question of what we are to
believe. The prick of sense often
elicits ready consent, but what we believe in the face of sensory stimulation depends
on our antecedent convictions. For
example, imagine we believe we see something red before us, and this belief
arises so naturally and quickly that no other belief seems to be involved. But we are enmeshed in our beliefs. We believe our circumstances are those in
which we may trust our senses and, consequently, that there is little chance of
error. If we believed instead that the
chance of error was great, we would resist responding with such perceptual
belief. Thus the stimulation of the
senses elicits belief through the mediation of a system of antecedent beliefs.[vi]
There are two points to note about
this argument. First, the argument
fails. The conclusion Lehrer intends to
demonstrate is that justification is completely a matter of the relationship
between beliefs, which he expresses in the epigram that there is no exit from
the circle of beliefs. Lehrer's
argument, however, demonstrates at most
something weaker: that justificatory
status always depends on beliefs in some way or another. He does not show that experience, for example,
plays no role in justification; instead, he shows at most only that it cannot
by itself account for the epistemic status of belief. Lehrer fails to address the further claim
that experience might nonetheless be necessary for justification, and if
experience is necessary by yielding partial justification for such beliefs, the
Doxastic Assumption is false. Second,
and more important, even if the argument were successful, it does not show that
coherentism itself is committed to the Doxastic Assumption. Instead, it would at most show that the only
plausible versions were so committed. So
this argument fails to give us a reason for characterizing coherentism in terms
of such a commitment.
Perhaps Lehrer
only intends to offer what he considers to be the best version of coherentism,
and so shouldn't be accused of poor metatheory regarding the proper construal
of coherentism. Other coherentists are
more metatheoretically explicit, however.
Donald Davidson, for example, claims that the Doxastic Assumption is
distinctive of coherentism. He claims
that coherentism is the view that nothing but beliefs can be appealed to in an
account of the justification of our view of the world, and he argues that
nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief.[vii] He argues against any attempt "to ground
belief in one way or another on the testimony of the senses,"[viii] and he summarizes the case against such a
view as follows:
The relation between a sensation and
a belief cannot be logical, since sensations are not beliefs or other
propositional attitudes. What then is
the relation? The answer is, I think,
obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in this
sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs.
But a causal explanation of a belief does not show how or why the belief
is justified.[ix]
This argument and the
characterization of coherentism which it accompanies should be rejected,
however. First, coherentists need not
limit their account of justification to relations between actual beliefs. Consider Lehrer's verific knower version of
coherentism.[x] A simplified version of it implies that a
belief is justified just when the person holding the belief would regard it as
the best way to achieve the goal of getting to the truth and avoiding error,
were that person purged of all beliefs held for motives other than a
disinterested concern for the truth. A
simple emendation of this theory leaves its coherentism untouched but nonetheless
fails to define coherence over actual beliefs.
On that emendation, not only do we imagine a person purged of beliefs of
untoward motivation, we also imagine the person with the additional beliefs he
or she would have had, had they been motivated in an epistemically more
propitious manner. On such a theory,
coherence is not defined over actual beliefs, but the theory is coherentist
nonetheless because it understands justification in terms of coherence with
some preferred system of information.
In the above
case, the preferred system is encoded in (counterfactual) beliefs, but that
form is not obviously essential to the coherentist structure of the
theory. For, contrary to the possible
states Davidson considers, there are a variety of non-doxastic states. One such state is what Davidson calls a
sensation state, a state that plays a causal role in belief but is not itself a
propositional attitude. There are other
states to consider however. One such
state is an appearance state, which is a propositional attitude. It can appear to one that, e.g., one's spouse
is angry, and the content of the 'that' clause here demonstrates the propriety
of labelling it a propositional attitude.
Furthermore, some such states surely fall under the rubric 'the
testimony of the senses', and is not to be confused with any belief state that
has the same propositional content.
One's appearances can be known to be misleading on certain occasions, so
that one fails to believe that p even though it appears to one that p. So Davidson's argument fails in virtue of a procrustean
appraisal of the ways in which the testimony of the senses might be employed in
a theory. Moreover, there is no prima
facie implausibility in the idea that a certain belief can cohere with a
system of information, where some of that system is encoded in the form of
appearance states instead of belief states (or counterfactual belief
states).
It is a bit
puzzling that, though Davidson defines coherentism in terms of the Doxastic
Assumption, he never explains why he does so.
Perhaps he is following tradition here, for such an understanding is
nearly universally shared, or at least unopposed. Yet, agreement in epistemological metatheory
no more makes for truth than it does elsewhere.
The consensus opinion might be no more than a result of undue focus on
the kinds of coherence theory typically offered in opposition to extant
versions of foundationalism. So, if
coherence must be defined relative to a doxastic system, we are yet to see a
good reason for thinking so.
I submit that the
argument presupposed by this understanding of coherentism is that, without an
identification of coherentism with the Doxastic Assumption, coherentism
collapses into a version of foundationalism.
In particular, coherentists need to oppose the regress argument for foundationalism,
according to which justification must trace back to basic beliefs. To be a foundationalist, then, requires at a
minimum that one adopt an asymmetrical picture of justification. On it, some beliefs are justified by being
based on other beliefs, but there is also a class of beliefs that are justified
in some other way.
So one way to
avoid foundationalism is to offer a theory that denies asymmetry altogether,
and affirming the Doxastic Assumption takes us part of the way at least to such
a goal. Even so, denying the asymmetry
feature is not necessary for avoiding foundationalism. For there are well-known examples of
coherence theories that involve an asymmetry feature. Explanatory coherence theorists, for example,
sometimes claim that the explainers are justified differently from the way in
which the explainees are justified.[xi] Such coherence theories shows that asymmetry
alone is not sufficient to guarantee that a theory is a foundationalist
one.
In addition to
asymmetry, foundationalists also insist on some type of self-warrant or
intrinsic warrant for foundational beliefs.
Minimally, relations to other beliefs cannot be the entire story, and a
typical way to avoid having relations to other beliefs be the entire story is
to claim that experience itself plays a role in virtue of imparting some degree
of positive epistemic status to foundational beliefs. Not even explanatory coherence theories can
stomach such a role for experience, for it is essential to coherentism to
oppose the foundationalist idea that some degree of warrant can be imparted to
beliefs directly by experience. If so,
however, it looks as if any denial of the Doxastic Assumption that allows
experience to play a role in justification will make one a
foundationalist.
This worry that
leads to the marriage of coherentism and the Doxastic Assumption is
unfounded. The argument would work if
there were only one relation that could hold between sensory experience and the
epistemic status of beliefs, the relation whereby the former imparts some
degree of epistemic status to beliefs.
There are other options, however.
One such option appeals to the concept of INUS conditions discussed
earlier. Perhaps experience imparts no
degree of positive epistemic status to belief, but is rather an INUS condition
for any belief to have positive epistemic status. On such a picture of the relationship between
experience and belief, some beliefs would depend for their epistemic status on
experience, but not in a foundationalist way.
For experience would be Insufficient for any degree of positive
epistemic status; it would simply be false that any belief receives any degree
of warrant from experience. Experience
would nonetheless be a Non-redundant component of a larger complex which
was itself Unnecessary but Sufficent for the belief to have
positive epistemic status. On such a
picture, experience would play an important part in the story about positive
epistemic status, but it would not play the kind of role distinctive of
foundationalism. The resulting theory
would have the justification of some beliefs depending on experience, but not
in a way that yields any kind of intrinsic or self-warrant to those
beliefs--not in a way, that is, that relies on any impartation of even the
tiniest degree of warrant to beliefs from experience. For experience is simply insufficient, on
this view, for any degree of positive epistemic status. In this way, coherentists can appeal to
experience without endorsing foundationalism.
Moreover, if one
considers the motivation for coherentism, there is no particular reason for
insisting that the system of information, in relation to which a belief is
warranted, must be a system of doxastic information. What coherentists oppose is the
foundationalists' idea that warrant rests on or arises out of
experience directly; they believe, instead, that justification arises out of
interdependence within a coherent system of information. In order to avoid foundationalism here, one
does not need to deny experience every kind of explanatory role whatsoever
regarding warrant; instead, one need only deny the distinctively
foundationalist claim that some degree of positive epistemic status is imparted
to belief by sensory experience itself.
Doing so leaves a theorist free to assert that warrant is a matter of
coherence with an appropriate system of information, thereby affirming
coherentism without implying which propositional attitudes such information
must be encoded in, if such information must be encoded at all.
Why should this
point about the variety of forms in which coherentism can appear matter? The reason it matters is that many of the
criticisms aimed at coherentism have force only against versions of coherentism
wedded to the Doxastic Assumption (if they have any force at all). First, consider the input problem, which
BonJour formulates as follows:
Coherence is purely a matter of the internal
relations between the components of the belief system; it depends in no way on
any sort of relation between the system of beliefs and anything external to
that system. Hence if, as a coherence
theory claims, coherence is the sole basis for empirical justification, it
follows that a system of empirical beliefs might be adequately justified, indeed
might constitute empirical knowledge, in spite of being utterly out of contact
witht he world that it purports to describe.
Nothing about any requirement of coherence dictates that a coherent
system of beliefs need receive any sort of input from the world or be in
any way causally influenced by the world.[xii]
The input problem concerns the
relationship between a system of beliefs and the external world. Whatever the force of the objection, however,
it disappears as a problem unique to coherence theories once experience is
allowed to play a role. Suppose, for
example, that coherence is defined over both beliefs and appearance states,
with appearance states being INUS conditions for positive epistemic
status. Then coherentists have every bit
as much right as do foundationalists to claim that input from the world plays a
role in determining which beliefs are justified. So the first benefit of properly grasping the
nature of coherentism is that it disarms the attempt by foundationalists to
undermine coherentism with the input problem.
A second problem
is the data problem. Put metaphorically,
the problem is how the entire system of justification gets "off the
ground" in the first place. To get
off the ground, there needs to be something with which a belief must cohere,
something in place prior to the formation of the belief itself. Consider, for example, the early stages of
learning. Even such early stages involve
the formation of justified beliefs. Yet,
coherentism as traditionally understood borders on having to deny such a claim,
in virtue of the fact that there is little in place at such an early stage with
which beliefs can cohere. Coherence
theories that deny any any asymmetry between the justification of some beliefs
and the justification of others, and which also define justification in terms
of coherence with the system of information encoded in one's actual beliefs,
face such a problem. For such early
learning involves the development of a system for future beliefs to cohere
with, and thus seems incapable of involving such coherence itself.
Other coherence
theories have no easier time with the data problem. Explanatory coherence theories, for example,
try to respond to the problem by suggesting that some beliefs are justified by
explaining other beliefs while these latter beliefs are justified by being
explained. The difficulty here is
obvious, as Lycan explains:
The present suggestion is that we
begin with a set of initial data, explain these by making certain hypotheses,
defend the hypotheses on the basis of their ability to explain the data, and
then defend the initial data on the ground that they are explained by a set of
justified explanatory hypotheses.
Right: Any elementary logic
student would spot the circularity.[xiii]
Lycan, like BonJour, prefers to take
the data to be spontaneous beliefs.
For BonJour, observational beliefs are a subset of spontaneous beliefs,
and the data problem is addressed by having observational beliefs function as
the data to which a system of beliefs is responsible. Such observational beliefs are nonetheless
justified by their relation to other beliefs:
beliefs such as that the cognitively spontaneous belief in question is
of kind K and arises in circumstance C, and K beliefs formed in C are most
likely true.[xiv] Lycan defends the justifiedness of
spontaneous beliefs differently, by appealing to a conservatism doctrine: the doctrine which claims that one should
accept those spontaneous beliefs that seem to be true.[xv]
Neither of these
responses to the data problem is wholly satisfactory. First, a circularity threatens BonJour's
account unless he can explain how the beliefs which underly the justification
of any spontaneous belief do not depend on spontaneous beliefs of the same kind
for their justification. For example, if
spontaneous beliefs of kind K formed in circumstance C are most likely true,
how is this belief justified except on the basis of having formed many
spontaneous beliefs of that kind in those circumstances and noting that most of
them are true? One doesn't get knowledge
about the general reliability of perception without first having many
perceptual beliefs; and the process of finding out that perception is reliable
is one riddled with instances of justified beliefs. Moreover, BonJour himself admits that his
account of justification implies radical skepticism (in virtue of depending on
what he calls "the Doxastic Presumption," the presumption that we do
have an adequate grasp of which beliefs we hold),[xvi]
and the reason it does infects the justification given above for observational
beliefs, thereby erasing any comfort that might be found in his approach to the
data problem. For if the data problem
can be solved only within a version of coherentism that embraces radical
skepticism, such a "solution" is hardly worthy of the name.
Lycan's proposal
avoids this problem, but faces another.
According to Lycan, one should accept those spontaneous beliefs that
seem to be true, i.e., the data beliefs are those that are spontaneous and seem
to be true. One wonders, however, why
spontaneity plays a role here at all.
Why not, for example, simply favor those beliefs of yours that seem to
you to be true (are there some that don't)?
Such radical conservatism is much stronger than Lycan endorses, but it
is hard to see what reason he has for avoiding it. To find such a reason, he needs to tell us
what it is about spontaneity as such that is
justification-imparting: why spontaneity
itself is an epistemically favorable characteristic of a belief.
If, however, we
deny the Doxastic Assumption by defining coherence over both appearances and
beliefs, the data problem is not severe.
One way of specifying the class of data beliefs is in terms of those
with a content also characterizing some appearance state. The justification of such beliefs would
depend on coherence not only with this particular appearance state, but also
with other data beliefs and with any system already in place. Such a view involves no circularity worries,
nor does it employ any conservativism doctrine, though it does precisely what
Lycan and BonJour seem to be trying to do:
get a class of data beliefs that are tied to experience.
We may conclude
then that there are significant advantages to distinguishing between the
impartation of warrant relation and INUS conditions for warrant. When it is assumed that only the former
relation can obtain between belief and experience, one can avoid
foundationalism only by declaring allegiance to the Doxastic Assumption. If, however, one recognizes the latter
possibility, coherentism is freed of criticisms that arise only when it is
conjoined to that assumption. The result
is an understanding of coherentism whose credentials can be compared and
contrasted to those of foundationalism without any unnecessary distraction
arising from perceived problems with the Doxastic Assumption.
Coherentism and the Basing Relation
The Doxastic
Assumption is not the only distraction that arises in recent epistemology when
coherentism's credentials are purportedly on review, however. Another one has to do with the relationship
between coherentism and the basing relation, the relation which distinguishes
beliefs that have only a justified content from those beliefs where the believing
itself is justified. For example, Holmes
and Watson may have precisely the same information about who committed a
particular murder, and both may believe that the butler did it. Holmes' belief may nonetheless have a virtue
not possessed by Watson's. For Watson
may have acquired the belief by a sturdy knock on the head after falling down a
flight of stairs, whereas Holmes has "deduced" the guilt of the
butler from the information that both he and Watson possess. In such a case, Watson's belief may have a
content that is justified, but Holmes has something more. Whereas Watson's believing is not justified
even though what he believes is justified (by the information he and Holmes
share), Holmes' believing is itself justified, for he holds the belief on the
basis of, or because of, the evidence for it.
When warrant obtains for the content of a belief, I will say that it is
propositionally warranted; when a belief is both propositionally warranted and
properly based, I will say it is doxastically warranted.[xvii]
Recently, some
have suggested that coherentism is committed to peculiar views about the basing
relation, views that cast doubt on the adequacy of coherentism. As we shall see, appeal to INUS conditions
absolves coherentism of the charge and removes another distraction from an accurate
assessment of the merits of coherentism.
The discussants I
have in mind are Alvin Plantinga and John Pollock. Plantinga characterizes coherentism so that
it must deny that there are non-basic warranted beliefs,[xviii]
and John Pollock thinks that an important kind of coherentism cannot explain the
difference between a properly and an improperly based belief.[xix] These two claims are connected. If Pollock is right, and if Plantinga were to
have warranted reservations about the possibility of a coherentism other than
the one Pollock criticizes, Plantinga's construal of coherentism would be
implied by Pollock's criticism. To see
this, consider Plantinga's characterization of coherentism:
Current lore has it . . . that the
coherentist does not object to circular reasoning at all, provided the circle
is large enough...
But why saddle him with anything so
miserably implausible? There is a much
more charitable way to construe his characteristic claim. He should not be seen as endorsing circular
reasoning. . .. His suggestion, instead, is that coherence is the sole source
of warrant. He is instead pointing to
a condition under which a belief is properly basic. . .. On his view, a belief B is properly basic for
a person S if and only if B appropriately coheres with the rest
of S's noetic structure. . .. (p. 77ff.)
Plantinga here proposes that
coherentism is a special kind of foundationalism because it implies that there
are properly basic beliefs. Even worse,
coherentists are foundationalist zealots--not only are some warranted beliefs
properly basic, all of them are.
These claims are
shocking. Coherentists are wont to
assert, not that all warranted beliefs are properly basic, but rather
that none of them are.
Coherentists would react strongly to being characterized as special
kinds of foundationalists, inclined perhaps to treat such pronouncements as
projections by harried foundationalists
instead of insight into coherentism. We
might suspect, then, that Plantinga has unusual senses of the crucial terms
employed in his characterization of coherentism. The evidence, however, shows otherwise.
For Plantinga,
which basic beliefs are properly basic is a matter for each particular theory
to clarify (p. 70), and Plantinga
endorses two principles about the basing relation itself:
(1) If one belief
is based on another, then the second is a cause of the first; and
(2) If one
explicitly infers a belief from another, then one bases the first belief on the
second. (p. 70)
One obvious implication of claim (2)
is that no basic belief is inferential in character, for by definition basic
beliefs are beliefs that are not based on other beliefs. Since inferential beliefs are not basic
beliefs, Plantinga implies that coherentists must deny that any warranted
belief is ever explicitly inferred from other beliefs. That is, coherentists deny the possibility of
warranted inferential beliefs.
Recall that
Plantinga's explicit motivation for his construal of coherentism was charity,
wanting to avoid saddling the coherentist with the "miserably
implausible" claim that circular reasoning can sometimes generate
warrant. Such charity will leave the
coherentist wishing Plantinga had already given at the office. No coherentist I know of accepts such a
characterization, and if some do, they are foolish indeed. For it is patently obvious that warranted
beliefs can be inferred ones.
Plantinga's
mistake in characterizing coherentism is contained in the quote above. First, he correctly points out that the
coherentist's "suggestion . . . is that coherence is the sole source of
warrant." But in the very next
sentence, he also claims that the coherentist "is . . . pointing to a
condition under which a belief is properly basic." Since his discussion of coherentism focuses
on this second claim, Plantinga may think that the two claims are equivalent,
or that the second follows from the first.
No such
connection exists. The first remark
(that coherence is the sole source of warrant) is a claim about propositional
warrant, that kind of warrant that accrues to the content of what one believes
(or to the content of a claim one does not believe). According to a coherentist, only coherence
with an appropriate system is capable of generating such warrant. The concepts of basing and proper basing
employed in the second claim above (that the coherentist is pointing to a
condition under which a belief is properly basic) are quite another thing. These concepts have to do with doxastic
warrant, the warrant a belief has when its content is propositionally warranted
and the belief is properly based. So,
Plantinga has made a mistake in characterizing coherentism, one that arises by
failing to recognize the distinction between propositional and doxastic
warrant.
Somewhat
surprising, it is not clear that Plantinga believes what he writes anyway. He remarks later on two types of
coherentism:
The
pure coherentist holds that all warranted propositions in a noetic structure
are basic in that structure; no warrant gets transmitted. The impure coherentist holds that some
propositions may get their warrant by virtue of being believed on the basis of
others; but the ultimate source of the warrant in question is coherence. Both accept the view that coherence is the only
source of warrant; and this is the central coherentist claim. (pp. 79-80)
This quote stands in contrast to the
earlier quote from Plantinga, for here we have specified a version of
coherentism (impure coherentism) according to which some beliefs are warranted
but not properly basic, because they get their warrant from other beliefs. What makes the view coherentist is its
insistence that the ultimate source of warrant is still coherence.
Perhaps a
charitable way to interpret Plantinga is to take his earlier remarks about
coherentism as applying only to pure coherentism. Then we could say that he characterizes
coherentism so that coherence is the sole source of warrant, and that this
claim, when unsullied by impurities, yields the pure view that all warranted
beliefs are properly basic.
This
interpretation removes the contradiction but leaves the mystery, for we still
have a characterization of one kind of coherentism that no coherentist should
accept and that is still susceptible to the response that such a
characterization arises only by ignoring the distinction between propositional
and doxastic warrant. The mystery could
be solved in a way that absolves Plantinga if coherentist purity undermines any
appeal to this distinction in such a way that the only choice left to
coherentists is to agree that all warranted beliefs are properly basic, despite
what they might wish to say. It is here
that Pollock's criticisms of holistic coherentism are relevant.
Pollock
says that there is a distinction between what I call propositional and doxastic
warrant, and that any correct theory must be able to give an account of
it. But, he claims, holistic positive
coherence theories cannot explain the distinction, for such a distinction would
require a coherentist to maintain that every belief is a partial cause of every
other belief because of the holistic picture of warrant adopted by
coherentists.(p. 81) So holistic
coherentism should be rejected.
This criticism
can support Plantinga's characterization of
coherentism in the following way.
If Pollock is right, some coherentists must hold that no belief ever
fails to be warranted by failing to be properly based. To claim otherwise requires holding the
hopelessly implausible claim that a belief is based on absolutely everything in
one's entire belief system. Recall that
Plantinga, unlike Pollock, thinks the linear view according to which reasoning
in a large enough circle is acceptable misinterprets the claims of
coherentism. In the passage quoted
earlier, he notes that he sees no good reason to interpret the coherentist's
characteristic claim in this "miserably implausible" fashion. This remark suggests that Plantinga thinks
there is no such thing as a linear, or non-holistic, version of
coherentism. If we were to conclude,
then, that coherentism can only come in the form Pollock criticizes, and that
criticism is correct in claiming that the coherentist cannot give an account of
proper basing, we get the following. The
coherentist must maintain that no belief ever falls into epistemic disfavor by
being improperly based, for to fall into disfavor on such grounds would require
a theory of the basing relation that could distinguish properly from improperly
based beliefs. And if the coherentist
must maintain that no belief ever falls into epistemic disfavor on grounds of
improper basing, the coherentist must admit that every belief is automatically
based properly, i.e., that it passes any legitimate basing test for (doxastic)
warrant. So we get the Plantingian
characterization if Pollock is right:
for a true coherentist, every warranted belief is properly basic.
The important
question regarding the difficulties which arise for coherentism in these
related discussions is whether Pollock's criticism of (one kind of) coherentism
can be sustained. In a word, it cannot. Pollock assumes that the coherentist must
clarify the concept of proper basing in terms of a causal relation between that which propositionally
warrants a belief and the belief in question.
This assumption involves two requirements. The first is that the basing relation is a
species of causal relation; I will grant that point in what follows. The second concerns what the relata of the
basing relation; what the basing relation is a relation between. According to Pollock, it must be a relation
between that which propositionally warrants a belief and the
belief itself. I will focus on this second claim.
There is no good
reason for a coherentist to accept such a claim. Propositional warrant may be as systemic an
affair as you please, and yet doxastic warrant depend nonetheless on some
special components of the system.
Consider again INUS conditions for warrant, for example. Such a condition might be a cause of belief,
and there is no reason a coherentist cannot appeal to such conditions in an
account of proper basing. Such an appeal
amounts to a denial of the claim that the basing relation is a relation between
that which propositionally warrants a belief and the belief itself; according
to the holistic coherentist, that relation obtains only between the entire
relevant system and the belief itself.
Nonetheless, the entire relevant system might contain INUS conditions
for the warrant of the belief in question, and the coherentist can claim that
in order for the belief to be doxastically warranted, it must be based on some
INUS condition or conditions for the warrant of that belief.
Some sketchy
examples of what such a theory might look like may prove helpful. Consider subjective versions of
coherentism. Such versions can maintain
that one's system of beliefs contains a (subjective) theory of epistemic
relevance that places constraints on appropriate basing. On such a theory, having an appropriately
based belief (i.e., a belief that is not disbarred from candidacy for doxastic
warrant because of some defect with regard to how it is based) might require
being aware of just which elements in the system count as epistemically
relevant to the belief (where INUS conditions for warrant count as
epistemically relevant conditions even though they impart no warrant). Alternatively, a theory of this sort might
require that the explanation (the best one and perhaps the one the person in
question accepts or would accept on reflection) of why one holds the belief
conform to that subjective theory of epistemic relevance.
Imagine, for another
example, a Bayesian account of warrant in terms of degrees of belief. The version I imagine employs diachronic
dutch books as a constraint on warranted degrees of belief, so that one's
warranted degree of belief tomorrow is a function of one's conditional degrees
of belief today, conditional on what future experience might teach.[xx] Such a theory is fully holistic because
warrant obtains on such a theory only when the entire set of beliefs is
probabilistically coherent. What is
important about the view in the present context is that one's conditional
probabilities today contain an implicit theory of epistemic relevance, a theory
that implies that some new information is relevant to some degrees of belief
and not others. By containing such an
implicit theory of relevance, a Bayesian account of warrant can add a basing
requirement without adopting the absurd viewpoint that the entire system of
(degrees of) belief must be causally responsible for every properly based
degree of belief. It can do so by insisting
that its theory of epistemic relevance specifies only INUS conditions for
warrant.
Pollock might
wish to classify these theories as non-holistic, but his account of that
distinction fails to yield that result.
He says that a linear coherence theory "embraces essentially the
same view of reasons and reasoning as a foundations theory," one according
to which "P is a reason for S to believe Q by virtue of some relation
holding specifically between P and Q. A
reason for a belief is not automatically the set of all one's
beliefs." He says a holistic
coherence theory claims that, "in order for S to have reason for believing
P, there must be a relationship between P and the set of all of his
beliefs (where this relationship cannot be decomposed into simple reason
relationships between individual beliefs)." (p. 73)
This distinction
fails to show that the above theories are non-holistic, for an INUS condition
for warrant for p is simply not a reason, defeasible or otherwise, for p. A reason for p is something that
imparts (perhaps defeasible) warrant to p, and an INUS condition for
warrant is Insufficient for the impartation of any warrant
whatsoever. Thus, a coherentist can
affirm a holistic view of reasons, where only systemic relations count in favor
of the warrantedness or positive epistemic status of belief, and can
nonetheless isolate INUS conditions of positive epistemic status with reference
to which one defines proper basing.
Consider the Bayesian view above again.
One's probability for p given q constrains one's opinion about p
upon learning q in part because the condition cited is not simply q,
but rather q plus all of one's background information. So what is sufficient for the warrant p
acquires when q is learned is some larger condition (q plus
background information) of which q is a non-redundant component (because
the background information alone does not warrant p). Further, the larger condition, though
sufficient for the warrant of p, is not itself necessary. So the Bayesian view is already three-fourths
of the way toward q being an INUS condition for warrant with respect to p;
all that needs to be affirmed is that q on its own never imparts any
degree of warrant. Certainly, that
option is open to Bayesians, and if it is taken, the conditional probabilities
of today that constrain future opinion do so by specifying INUS conditions for
warrant. By taking this option, the
Bayesian can avoid the charge of holding a linear coherence theory and still
use INUS conditions for warrant in order to define proper basing.
Such a theory is
a holistic one on Pollock's category scheme, for the concept of a reason for
belief (i.e., that which imparts warrant to belief) is entirely systemic (what
imparts warrant is what you learn together with your entire system of
background information), not capable of being decomposed into reason, i.e.,
warrant-imparting, relationships between individual beliefs.
Because of their
holistic view of reasons, holistic theories such as the Bayesian and subjective
coherence theories above retain the advantages a holistic theory has in
addressing the regress argument for foundationalism, for that argument
presupposes a linear view of warrant transmission. Of course, a foundationalist could try to
resurrect something like the regress argument that applies to INUS conditions
for warrant, but the prospects for such an argument are not good. It may be true that every belief that is an
INUS condition for warrant will itself need to be warranted, but holistic
theories are at no obvious disadvantage in accounting for such warrant. Even if answering such questions leads the
coherentist back to beliefs that are warranted by a condition that includes
appearance states as INUS conditions, no obvious disadvantage accrues to the view
defended. All that would follow is that
such a coherentist posited an asymmetry between the justification of some
beliefs and the justification of other beliefs.
As we have seen, however, such an asymmetry alone does not imply
foundationalism. If the coherentist were
to assert that experience is not just an INUS condition for warrant, but
imparted some degree of warrant directly to beliefs, there would be a
problem. But the coherentist should not
say that, and in the absence of such a claim, no foundationalist implications
are to be found.[xxi]
One might worry
that a theory of proper basing which appeals to INUS conditions will not work
on grounds that everything in the relevant system will be such an INUS
condition. Such a worry can be allayed
easily. I'd have the same warrant for
thinking that I exist even if I didn't believe my grandmother is quirky, or
even if I believed the opposite. So the
latter belief plays no important explanatory role regarding the warrant of the
former belief, and hence is not a Non-redundant part of the belief
system. So not every element of a system
of information is an INUS condition of warrant for every (other) belief.
One might still
worry that too much of a belief system will be INUS conditions, and
hence that the coherentist will have to hold that a belief will have to be
based on a substantial part of the system.
This concern highlights the need for something I lack: a good theory of the basing relation. The force of the criticism can nevertheless
be blocked, for the difficulty is not unique to coherentism. The same problem arises for a defeasible
reasons theory. As we have seen, on such
a theory there can be multiple reasons for believing a particular claim: p can be a reason to believe q,
be defeated by d which is in turn overridden by o, yielding that p&d&o
is also a reason to believe q.
Furthermore, the heirarchy of defeaters and overriders is potentially
unlimited, yielding the result that there can be a potentially unlimited number
of reasons for believing any particular claim.
The question for such theories is, which reasons should the belief be
based on? This question raises precisely
the worry faced by the coherentist that too much of the system will be INUS
conditions for warrant. Furthermore,
both kinds of theorists will answer the worry in one of two ways: either isolate some of the INUS conditions or
defeasible reasons as privileged when it comes to basing, or argue that there
is nothing especially implausible about insisting that one base one's belief on
the entire collection of INUS conditions or defeasible reasons (for, as all
should recognize, belief formation is a very complex thing and it should not
surprise us if very much of our belief system is causally responsible in one
way or another for belief). We can thus
legitimately ignore the worry that too much of the system will be INUS
conditions for warrant, for the difficulty posed is not unique to coherentism
and the coherentist can approach the problem in much the same way as other
theorists.
So the point
stands that in the subjective and Bayesian examples above, accounts of the
basing relation are possible that are not psychologically implausible. The adequacy of any such theory is, of
course, another question. But the mere
possibility of formulating them shows that Pollock is mistaken.
With the failure
of Pollock's argument goes Plantinga's construal of coherentism, for the only
hope for that construal rested on denying that coherentists can help themselves
to the distinction between doxastic and propositional warrant. So Plantinga has misconstrued coherentism and
Pollock has misapprehended its weaknesses.
Coherentism is the view that limits the sources of propositional warrant
to coherence itself, but this (admittedly unenlightening) characterization
leaves coherentists free to impose basing requirements of their choice on
doxastic warrant. Contrary to Pollock,
coherentists can distinguish between propositional and doxastic warrant, and
because they can, contrary to Plantinga, coherentism does not imply that any
warranted beliefs are properly basic.
Conclusion
So we can see that the distinction between a
warrant-imparting relation and an INUS condition relation is particularly
fecund one in epistemology. In
particular, the distinction removes some important contemporary distractions
from a fruitful appraisal of the merits of coherentism. The heart of coherentism is found in its
rejection of foundationalism and in its affirmation that justification, or
positive epistemic status, is to be understood in terms of coherence. My goal here is to focus attention on these
fundamental claims of coherentism by removing tangential concerns. Coherentism proper is not committed to the
Doxastic Assumption, and faces no difficulty in holding that some beliefs are
non-basic or in clarifying the distinction between properly and improperly
based beliefs. In each case, treating
either appearances or individual beliefs as INUS conditions for positive
epistemic status shows that coherentists can appeal directly to experience in
its formulation and can adequately explain which beliefs in a system are
properly based and which are not. With
this ground-clearing completed, one can look again at coherentism, in a clear
light, undistracted by irrelevancies.[xxii]
Jonathan L. Kvanvig
Texas A&M University
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Notes
[i]John Pollock, Contemporary
Theories of Knowledge, (Totowa, New Jersey, 1986). Page references in the text to Pollock's view
are to this work.
[ii]Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, (Oxford, 1993). Page references in the text to Plantinga's
views are to this work.
[iii]J.L. Mackie, The Cement of the
Universe: A Study of Causation,
(Oxford, 1974).
[iv]John Pollock, Contemporary
Theories of Knowledge, (Totowa, 1986), p. 19.
[v]Keith Lehrer, Knowledge,
(Oxford, 1974), p. 188.
[vi]ibid.
[vii]Donald Davidson, "A Coherence
Theory of Truth and Knowledge," pp. 307-319 in Ernest LePore, ed., Truth
and Interpretation, (New York: Basil
Blackwell), 1986.
[viii]ibid., p. 310.
[ix]ibid., p. 311.
[x]Keith Lehrer, Knowledge.
[xi]See Keith Lehrer, Knowledge,
for an assessment of the prospects of such a theory.
[xii]BonJour, p. 108.
[xiii]Lycan, p. 165.
[xv]Lycan, p. 165-66.
[xvi]BonJour, p. 105.
[xvii]Here I ignore differences between the
epistemological concepts of rationality, justification, and warrant. There may be differences between these
concepts that are important in some contexts, but the differences are
irrelevant here.
[xviii]Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, (Oxford, 1993). Page references in the text to Plantinga's
views are to this work.
[xix]John Pollock, Contemporary
Theories of Knowledge, (Totowa, New Jersey, 1986). Page references in the text to Pollock's view
are to this work.
[xx]For explication and discussion of
such versions of Bayesianism, see Bas van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry,
(Oxford, 1989), especially Part II.
[xxi]For more on the need for self or
intrinsic warrant to define foundationalism, and its relationship to INUS
conditions of warrant, see "Can A Coherence Theory Appeal to Appearance
States?", especially pp. 197-200 and 211-212.
[xxii]For comments on earlier drafts of
this paper, my thanks to Michael Hand, Hugh McCann, and Mark Migotti.