Coherentism

Neverness has posted something on ignorance, and using coherentism as an epistemological framework. I’d agree with what he says if it’s meant as a descriptive claim – about what humans tend to do – but I’d be wary of suggesting we adopt coherintist epistemology as a normative proposition. It doesn’t embed or endorse some very useful, and seemingly justified, logical rules (excluded middle, non-contradiction, etc.).

I also don’t believe we should leave out some key insights from virtue epistemology, namely that we are at least partly in control over what path to go down in terms of the “set” or “tradition” of beliefs to follow. For example, isn’t it reasonable to demand us to ask, when encountering a new proposition, whether Occam’s Razor would challenge us to reject it or not?

By Jacques Rousseau

Jacques Rousseau teaches critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is the founder and director of the Free Society Institute, a non-profit organisation promoting secular humanism and scientific reasoning.