Coherentism In Philosophy

Coherentism has not gained much recognition throughout the history of philosophy. According to the traditional definition of knowledge, knowledge is Justified True Belief. Hence, one must first justify their belief before they can acquire any knowledge. Since most of the time the beliefs we assume we have justified and are justified based on other belief. Consequently, this promotes the concept of regress argument where the philosophers are on the quest to truly justify a belief thus we can know for sure that we have knowledge. Coherentist attempts to solve the regress problem by suggesting a system of beliefs where the justification is done by referring to other beliefs within the relevant justified system. In this essay, I will focus on the …show more content…
In general there have been three solutions to the general regress argument: infinite regress, sceptic and foundations. Out of all the propose theories, foundationalism appears to be the most possible. Foundationalism is the view where the justification is done by referring to basic beliefs. Coherentists pointed out that there should be a fourth solution to the argument: holism (BonJour, 2003). The belief can be justified if it is connected with a relevant justified system of beliefs where the beliefs are able to interlock and capable of interactive relationship which stands to supporting each other. Sometimes coherentism gives the impression of leading the regress into a circle. Some coherentists response to the circularity regress problem by claiming as long as the circles are large and complicated enough, it should not be considered as a problem at all. This response, however, did not gain much support because such reasoning only reinforces the lack of legitimate force for justifying beliefs in the chains of justification. Most importantly, a large and complicated circle after all, is still a circle. The fundamental concept has not been changed (BonJour, 2003). There are many coherentists holds the believe that most of the problems lies in the lack of ability to precisely distinguish the things which coherence is …show more content…
They believe the problem rest on the misunderstanding about coherentism. Often coherentists will point out that their purpose is to build systems of justified beliefs and the idea of justification should not be linear, or circular, it should be holistic in character (BonJour, 2003). A belief will not be justified as true or be rejected as false just because of its relation to its surrounding beliefs. Rather, the belief will be justified if it is in relations with the relevant justified system of beliefs. Some have argued that changing the justification to holistic fails to truly answer the circular problem. For such a system of beliefs still requires the beliefs to be circular justification because all the individual beliefs that make up the system are justified by referring to other beliefs in the system and hence end up in a circular fashion. Even though at first sight, it appears that coherentists have gone one step ahead by providing a solution to the regress problem through the building of a holistic system where the beliefs involve in the system are justified. When we dig deeper into this view, the problems started to come out of the surface. Even when the beliefs are involved in a justified system, it still cannot hide the fact that the beliefs are justified by other unjustified beliefs and gone back to leading the justification into a