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Coherentism And Foundationalism
The structure of justification

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Coherentism And Foundationalism

MarchHare
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Posted 06/23/09 - 10:00 AM: Subject: Coherentism And Foundationalism	#1
I've been putting quite a bit of thought into the (most popular) responses to the question "How can we have a good justification for our belief P?" and I think I've narrowed down my criticisms to one big criticism each: Foundationalism: it's too linear. Linearity is a problem primarily because (1) it doesn't reflect the hugely complex processes of justification that we experience in our day-to-day lives; (2) while foundationalists would agree that it isn't a model of our conscious experience of justification (we all don't remember having innate ideas as toddlers and building up from this irrefutable ideas, to use one foundationalist model) I'm not sure why sitting down and thinking out a linear structure of justification should be how we come to an accurate model of how we can get a good model to justify P; (3) there's something very depressing about the epistemic luck involved in foundationalism, ie. if you don't know the foundational-belief Q that starts off the system of justification for P, you've got no chance. Coherentism: the content of P, Q, R etc. aren't important in coherentism, except in how they relate. It's trivially easy to come up with a coherent system in which the content of the beliefs is wrong but the relations are coherent, as fictional universes and alternative histories show. Is there a way of for the coherentist that I don't know? More and more, it seems to be like any account of justification needs to be part of a broader account of inquiry, thus taking into account the fact that we are fallible and that continual critical inquiry changes the content of our beliefs for the better. However, my track record in understanding epistemology is poor, so I'm hoping I've outlined whatever glaring errors there are in my assessment and that these could be pointed out.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.

sqeecoo
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Posted 06/23/09 - 10:31 AM:	#2
Unfortunately, I don't think there are any good replies to this criticism. But there is also a more general argument applicable here. The simplest way of evaluating a theory of justification is to ask the following question: "Having justified a belief using this method, has our position improved in any way?" Let's say you start with an unjustified belief A, like "all ravens are black". You then justify it in some way, like using induction, fundational beliefs, or whatnot (let's put aside the problems with the practical application of these methods). What is achieved by this other then shifting the question to the reasons you have given, and the viability of the methods (induction, foundationalism) you have used? In what way is your position better, now that you have moved the problem from A to "induction is reliable" or "this belief is foundational", or something else? What's the advantage you have gained in relation to your starting position, namely that of examining an unjustified belief? Even more generally, the question justificationists (those that argue that justification is a viable method in rational inquiry) should answer is "Can justification do anything else then shift the question elsewhere, and can anything be gained by this?" For an alternative approach, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_rationalism Cheers!

treysuttle
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 06/23/09 - 10:36 AM:	#3
Foundationalists (at least myself) typically are not trying to model a theory of justification that accurately describes our process of justifying our beliefs. This is actually what naturalized epistemologists are suggesting to be the primary focus of an empirical epistemology. I don't reject that as important...it's just not all there is to the story. I am concerned with providing a criterion account for when a belief in fact is justified to the extent that the belief may count as knowledge. In other words, my epistemological project is prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive. Let's say that I believe that the president is in Chicago today...I make the claim: 'The president is in Chicago today'. Now, even just for me to have such a belief requires all kinds of concepts....many of which I acquired early in my life...and others along the way..which I don't remember picking up - or how I picked them up. I can nonetheless ask, without inquiring into how I picked up these concepts, whether my belief is justified or not. Of course we may inquire into the causal processes that may be relevant for assessing my justification -- did you read it in the New York times, or the National Enquirer...and so on. The issue is in understanding in what way justification must relate to a belief / statement in order for it to justify the statement in such a way as to be knowledge. Logical consistency is one way that it must relate (except in the case of beliefs based on sensory experience...that is a whole can of worms!). The coherentists are correct about this. What I disagree with the coherentists about is that logical consistency (or any kind of consistency alone) is sufficient for justification to count as knowledge. For example, I would also acquire that the belief be the product of a reliable belief-forming process (the same process cannot randomly produce true beliefs and false beliefs). As well, I take it that we have to know something about this process (it can't be a power of clairvoyance that always produces true beliefs). Even though my project is towards a foundationalist theory, I both hold that most all knowledge claims are fallible and that any claim to knowledge (this is actually a constraint on good justification) must be open to revision based on relevant discoveries. Edited by treysuttle on 06/23/09 - 10:42 AM

Crackers
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0 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 06/23/09 - 11:08 AM:	#4
MarchHare wrote: Foundationalism: it's too linear. Linearity is a problem primarily because (1) it doesn't reflect the hugely complex processes of justification that we experience in our day-to-day lives; What "hugely complex process"? A foundationalist might argue that: If I can see object A then the knowledge that object A exists is true, this is justified by the 'basic belief' that what I can see must exist; which is self-evident. Simple, straight-foward logic. Of course, people would argue on what constitutes as a 'basic belief.' Descartes, for example, believed that the sensory data doesn't constitute as 'basic belief' as our sensory experiences may be illusions. It's "linearity" isn't a problem at all. What you said is a strawman, and is quite similar to: "theoretically, we can't have person A walk linearly from point B to point C, because that doesn't reflect the complexity of the process of walking from place to place that we experience in our day-to-day lives, like meandering side-to-side, avoiding dog feces..." (2) while foundationalists would agree that it isn't a model of our conscious experience of justification (we all don't remember having innate ideas as toddlers and building up from this irrefutable ideas, to use one foundationalist model) I'm not sure why sitting down and thinking out a linear structure of justification should be how we come to an accurate model of how we can get a good model to justify P; I don't know where the misconception that "linear = illogical" came from. (3) there's something very depressing about the epistemic luck involved in foundationalism, ie. if you don't know the foundational-belief Q that starts off the system of justification for P, you've got no chance. Yes, like the blind-man who will never know what colour his shoes are. Very depressing. Coherentism: the content of P, Q, R etc. aren't important in coherentism, except in how they relate. It's trivially easy to come up with a coherent system in which the content of the beliefs is wrong but the relations are coherent, as fictional universes and alternative histories show. Is there a way of for the coherentist that I don't know? Yes, coherentism can be used for fictional universes and such, but that does not render it void. One could say that: given that my computer exists and that my senses are not illusionary, I know that my computer lies in front of me.

Timothy
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 06/23/09 - 11:29 AM:	#5
MH wrote: Linearity is a problem primarily because (1) it doesn't reflect the hugely complex processes of justification that we experience in our day-to-day lives; Foundationalists don't find this as a problem, as their project is not about describing how we justify things, but rather finding out what is required for a justification to be an actual justification and provide evidence for knowledge. MH wrote: (2) while foundationalists would agree that it isn't a model of our conscious experience of justification (we all don't remember having innate ideas as toddlers and building up from this irrefutable ideas, to use one foundationalist model) I'm not sure why sitting down and thinking out a linear structure of justification should be how we come to an accurate model of how we can get a good model to justify P; Foundationalists approaches in the epistemology of natural science were heavily influenced by the axiomatic models in the foundationalists projects of the epistemology of mathematical knowledge. Axiomatization is a hierarchical structure, such that "truth" flows from the axioms, to the theorems, to further theorems, etc. It was a pretty good model of justification as applied to the formal sciences. Early foundationalists were impressed by this model, and intended to apply it to the epistemology of natural science. Hence the linear approach. Also, they considered that if the structure of justification was not linear and finite, either there would be no true justification (in a never ending process were the "axioms" are never reached) or there would be circular justification, thus begging the question (which is the main argument from foundationalists against coherentists and naturalized epistemologies). So the linearity is not a rabbit pulled out of a hat. MH wrote: (3) there's something very depressing about the epistemic luck involved in foundationalism, ie. if you don't know the foundational-belief Q that starts off the system of justification for P, you've got no chance. Depending on whether you're also an internalist, or an externalist , your depression can be lifted. Externalists position do not require the subject to actually be in possession of a given justification; all they require is that there is such a justification, which in turn means that foundationalist epistemologists must not only posit those "basic beliefs", but actually find out what those beliefs are. If you're an internalist... then maybe you will need Prozac... I think that Foundationalism chief problem isn't linearity, but rather what that linearity implies, i.e. "something" that is given, that is not itself a belief, but that justifies a belief. Contemporary theories of perception have done nothing but demonstrate the falsity of the "Myth of the Given". Also, current theories of mind and most metaphysicians nowadays would hold that such a "given" cannot justify a belief, because justification is a relation between conceptual contents (as Davidson pointed out). Some philosophers (e.g. John MacDowell) think that the empirical experience (the so-called "given"), apart from not being really a given, is actually conceptually structured in tiself, and thus can justify beliefs about the world... MH wrote: Coherentism: the content of P, Q, R etc. aren't important in coherentism, except in how they relate. It's trivially easy to come up with a coherent system in which the content of the beliefs is wrong but the relations are coherent, as fictional universes and alternative histories show. Is there a way of for the coherentist that I don't know? I don't know much about coherentism, but I think that it is not equivalent to logical consistency, or the "formal coherentism" that you seem to be thinking about. They would argue for a more strong requirement, such that the content of the beliefs do have something to do. Actually, wouldn't be the content of the beliefs what would justify other beliefs? The process of justification itself would have to follow some sort of deductive (or abductive??) form; mere coherence (logical coherence) with the other beliefs currently held does not by itself guarantees justification. Logical coherence would be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for justification. But that's what I think coherentism should be... MH wrote: More and more, it seems to be like any account of justification needs to be part of a broader account of inquiry, thus taking into account the fact that we are fallible and that continual critical inquiry changes the content of our beliefs for the better. Indeed. Pragmatic-influenced philosophers have couched the theory of justification and the theory of knowledge within a broader theory of inquiry. C.S. Peirce and Donald Davidson are clear examples of that. Heck, Davidson even couched his theory of meaning and knowledge in a broad, theory of rational inquiry...
"Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic." P.F. Strawson

Timothy
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Posted 06/23/09 - 11:40 AM:	#6
treysuttle wrote: he coherentists are correct about this. What I disagree with the coherentists about is that logical consistency (or any kind of consistency alone) is sufficient for justification to count as knowledge. I suspect they would not hold logical consistency as sufficient, but as necessary. Yet a foundationalist might as well hold such condition. SO the difference must lie as to what would provide a sufficient condition. I think coherentists would hold that what is sufficient for justification is some sort of argument such that the truth of a belief follows from the truth of some other beliefs... independently of how the belief being examined was formed. While a foundationalist (at least an empiricist one) would consider such belief formation as decisive in its "justificatibility" status (e.g. the belief "there's an x over there"... was the x observed in normal conditions? etc.) Foundationalism would require something else than beliefs... it requires "the given"... while coherentists can safely remain with beliefs alone. And here's when MacDowell criticism against coherentism seems to me compelling... for such a form of epistemology leaves as a complete mystery how our perceptual experience plays a role in justifying thoughts about the world. "Knowledge" is supposed to be about the world, but it seems that the world itself would play no role on whether such system of beliefs is true or false. The belief system would be like a wheel spinning in the void... without any "empirical cog" attached to it.
"Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic." P.F. Strawson

treysuttle
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Posted 06/23/09 - 11:45 AM:	#7
Crackers, I took MarchHare to mean that there is more involved in the acquiring of beliefs than the sort of 'inferences' that foundationalists (and coherentists) talk about, thus the: hugely complex processes of justification that we experience in our day-to-day lives Whether we actually 'experience' this hughly complex process...I don't know about that. On the other hand, if he/she just means by 'linear', not-circular reasoning. Then I question to what extent this is really an objection... Of course, the view that there really could be fully consistent yet fictional (false?) doxastic states is practically taken for granted by many epistemologists (Ernest Sosa, for example). Yet, there have been some top rate philosophers, such as Donald Davidson, who have argued that there could not consistent, yet largely false, doxastic systems. Either way one wants to go, it requires some fleshing out (its not an 'evident' argument against coherentism). What seems to me, at least almost evident' is that even if it is the case that one really could not have a consistent yet mostly false belief system, that this consistency alone (even couched with the notion that most of one's beliefs are true) could serve to justify any particular belief about the world... To do that, seems like you have to go beyond consistency.

treysuttle
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Posted 06/23/09 - 12:18 PM:	#8
Timothy, I take it that the coherentist may appeal to more than consistency, but that it is the consistency that provides justification. such that the truth of a belief follows from the truth of some other beliefs. That is really what logical consistency comes down to...it is 'truth-preserving'. But this is to no avail for our beliefs that actually are derived from sensory experience. I see no move for the coherentist here (short of a Davidsonian type move). I do take it that, even for the coherentist, justification will have to be dependent in some sense on what sort of belief that we are talking about...because beliefs derived from sensory experience are not inferred. This is the punch of Davidson's view that only propositions or beliefs can justify propositions or beliefs. Also that 'push' towards thinking of sensory experience as having propositional content or being 'belief-like' and all that. Once one considers that sensory experience can provide justification....one is a foundationalist, or at least a 'foundherentist'. I personally do not think the book on the 'given' is closed. One one hand, I think Sellars is absolutely correct that there is more involved in an 'immediate' sensory experience than what is immediately experienced. In that sense, the 'given' is ancient history. What is not closed, is that (irrespective of whatever conceptual scheme, apparatus, whatever) is involved in immediate experience, this excludes immediate experience from providing justificatory status to reports about those experiences. One absolutely necessary move is going to be to reject 'indirect realism' as a theory of perception. Another, is going to be to think about observation reports not just as statements but as a kind of performantive statement with truth-value. There is also interesting work being done on the idea that 'recognition' is not passive, but is a kind of skill that one acquires, and like all skills, inherently has a normative dimension to it. Those are all, I think, viable options on the table...but all very much in debate as well.

Timothy
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Posted 06/23/09 - 12:53 PM:	#9
treysuttle wrote: Timothy, I take it that the coherentist may appeal to more than consistency, but that it is the consistency that provides justification. It is just not obvious at all that it is the case. Logical consistency only tells us that given a system of beliefs, adopting some other belief P is permitted, as long as P does not contradict some other of the beliefs. You are permitted in believing that P, but the logical consistency of P with the system of beliefs does not mean that I should hold P, only that I can. There must be something else. So, for example, I could say that I'm entitled to hold P because (aside from tis logical consistency) there's a connection between some other of my previously held beliefs such that they "make it reasonable" or "plausible" to hold P. After all, we're talking here of a belief system, not a set of randomly organized beliefs. Systematicity, I think, means the existence of such relations between beliefs, as well as an organization of beliefs in terms of their strength. BonJour says this on the Stanford Article on Coherentism: SEP wrote: BonJour (1985) presents a different objective account of the coherence relation, citing the following five features in his account: 1. logical consistency; 2. the extent to which the system in question is probabilistically consistent; 3. the extent to which inferential connections exist between beliefs, both in terms of the number of such connections and their strength; 4. the inverse of the degree to which the system is divided into unrelated, unconnected subsystems of belief; and 5. the inverse of the degree to which the system of belief contains unexplained anomalies. (pp. 95,98) These factors are a good beginning toward an account of objective coherence, but by themselves they are not enough. We need to be told, in addition, what function on these five factors is the correct one by which to define coherence. That is, we need to know how to weight each of these factors to provide an assessment of the overall coherence of the system. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/#RelCoh Despite their short-falling, the point is that there's more to mere logical consistency in COherentism, regarding the origin of justification in such a theory. treysuttle wrote: That is really what logical consistency comes down to...it is 'truth-preserving' But this is to no avail for our beliefs that actually are derived from sensory experience. I see no move for the coherentist here (short of a Davidsonian type move). I would say that logical consistency comes down to 'contradiction prevention'. Still, wouldn't a coherentist admit that, given a belief derived from experience, it must be admitted and thus the system of belief must be revised? Since it is a legal move for the coherentist to introduce a "degree of belief" language, one can imagine that such a language gives the utmost degree of belief to those beliefs derived from experience, and when a belief of that sort contradicts the system of belief, one must not discard the belief (as the logical-consistency-only reading implies), but adopt it and revise the system in search for the belief that generates the contradiction,in order to eliminate it. Just as Quine does, I think. I don't know if calling it "foundherentist" is appropriate... this coherentist "quinean" and "davidsonian" approach takes sensory experience as merely causal, while foundationalists approaches takes sensory experience as a content that can justify. Put in other words, a foundationalist would say: Given sensory experience x, subject S is justified in holding the belief P While a coherentist would say S has belief P, caused by a sensory input x. However, he is only justified in believing P if, apart from being consistent with the rest of his beliefs, there's some ulterior connection between them such that it is rational or warranted for S to hold P. There's a subtle difference, isn't? treysuttle wrote: I personally do not think the book on the 'given' is closed. Agreed. MacDowell could be seen as one of the alternative views, which seem to retain essential features of what "the given" was supposed to provide, and yet avoids the problems with it.
"Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic." P.F. Strawson

180 Proof
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Posted 06/23/09 - 01:22 PM:	#10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundherentism Any thoughts on the intermediate position "Foundherentism" formulated by Susan Haack (linked above) I suspect may avoid (if only provisionally) the seemingly inevitable "too hot, too cold" impasse between these traditional epistemological approaches. Btw, my own affinities are closer to sqeecoo's vis-a-vis "Critical Rationalism" (Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_rationalism because this epistemology exchanges 'problems of justification' (re: solutions) for problems themselves (re: refutations). There is an intrinstic dialectic between so-called 'solutions to old problems' (i.e. conjectures) & 'testing' -- problematizing -- those old solutions (i.e. refutations) that bears strong resemblance to Dewey's conception of "Inquiry". Given that Haack's "Foundherentism" is a hybrid of Peirce & Dewey, there seems a convergence to the point where "Critical Rationalism" & "Foundherentism" are like flip sides of the same (fallibilist) coin. At the moment these limp generalities can't be helped because I'm traveling ... (More later.) Edited by 180 Proof on 06/30/09 - 12:58 AM. Reason: No mas ...
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

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