Paper Details

The theory of justification, also known as coherentism, holds that an individual belief or a collection of beliefs is justified if and only if the beliefs in the collection form a coherent system. In order to separate the coherence theory of justification from the coherence theory of truth, one must first define the terms. The former is a theory that explains what it means to be justified in holding a particular belief or set of beliefs. The latter is a philosophical account of what it means for a claim to be true. Modern coherence theorists usually agree with a coherence theory of justification, but they don't usually support a coherence theory of truth. This is different from some earlier writers in the British idealist tradition. For the purposes of their epistemological inquiries, they either favour a correspondence theory of truth or take the notion of truth as given. Despite this, many writers insist that coherence justification can serve as a guide to or standard for truth. However, these criticisms fail to explain why some beliefs appear to be justified by their internal consistency. This paper fills a hole in the literature against coherence by giving an account of justification by coherence that is not coherentist.

Anti-coherentist, Coherence, justification, British idealist tradition