Providing foundations for coherentism
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Providing foundations for coherentism
zbMATH Open document ID: 0962.03004
DOI: 10.1023/A:1005510414170
author: Erik J. Olsson
author: Sven Ove Hansson
published in: Erkenntnis
publication date: 2000-10-30T00:00:00Z
review text: The authors bring some simple formal considerations to bear on the discussion of coherentism as a philosophy of knowledge. Coherentists insist on the importance of the internal coherence of a belief system for its justification, minimizing (sometimes to the point of denying) the role of links with an external world. It is sometimes suggested that maximal coherence holds when every belief in the system is supported by its remainder. However, the authors point out that this condition is trivially satisfied by any belief system \(K\), understood as a set of propositions closed under classical consequence, if classical consequence is taken as sufficient for support. For if \(x\in K\) then for any \(y\) we have \(y\vee x\), \(\neg y\vee x\in Cn(K) \setminus \{x\}=K \setminus \{x\}\) so that \(x\in Cn(K\setminus \{x\})\). The lesson drawn by the authors is that if we are to apply a coherence condition such as the above, it should be to a belief base rather than to its closure.
reviewed by: David Makinson
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 03A05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 03B42
zbMATH DE Number: 1523304
zbMATH Keywords: belief states
zbMATH Keywords: philosophy of knowledge
zbMATH Keywords: internal coherence of a belief system
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: a:1005510414170
OpenAlex ID: W1849010581
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1523304