Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

8. The Pursuit of Truth: Coherentist Criteriology

131 Chapter 8 The Pursuit of Truth: Coherentist Criteriology SYNOPSIS • Coherentism bases its criteriology of truth in “coherence,” that is, on cognitive systematicity. But what is it that gets systematized? • The answer here lies in the idea of data—claims that are substantially plausible in the epistemic circumstances at issue, not certified truths but promising truth-candidates. • The ultimate validation of a coherentist approach to truth assessment lies in the pragmatic utility of its results. For in the end it is the efficacy of its applications —alike in theoretical and practical matters—that serves as the arbiter of our cognition—the controlling monitor of adequacy for truth-estimation. • The idea of truth with regard to general matters of fact as we deal with them in science is in fact something of an idealization. • It is not the accomplished product of current inquiry but the hypothesized product of idealized inquiry.The idea of truth as idealized coherence accordingly provides a cogent specification for the nature of truth. THE COHERENTIST APPROACH TO INQUIRY Coherentism, as we have seen, views the systemic-interrelatedness of factual theses as the criterial standard of their acceptability. But just how does such a coherence criteriology work? The overall stance of the theory is to be articulated in terms somewhat as follows: Acceptance-as-true is in general not the starting point of inquiry but its terminus. To begin with, all that we generally have is a body of prima facie truths, that is, presumption-geared and thereby merely plausible propositions that qualify as potential—perhaps even as promising—candidates for acceptance.The epistemic realities being as they are, these candidate-truths will, in general, form a mutually inconsistent set, and so exclude one another so as to destroy the prospects of their being accorded in toto recognition as truths pure and simple. The best that can be done in such circumstances is to endorse those as truths that best “cohere” with the others so as to “make the most” of the data as a whole in the epistemic circumstances at issue. Systemic coherence thus affords the criterial validation of the qualifications of truth-candidates for being classed as genuine truths. Systematicity thus becomes not just the organizer but the test of truth. A coherentist epistemology thus views the extraction of knowledge from the plausible data by means of an analysis of best-fit considerations. Its approach is fundamentally holistic in judging the acceptability of every purported item of information by its capacity to contribute toward a well-ordered, systemic whole. In general terms, the coherence criterion of truth operates as follows. One begins with a datum-set S ⫽ {P1,P2,P3,...} of suitably “given” propositions.These data are not necessarily true nor even consistent. They are not given as secure truths, in a foundationalist’s manner of theses established once and for all, but merely as presumptive or potential truths, that is, as plausible truth-candidates— and in general as competing ones that are mutually inconsistent. The task to which a coherentist epistemology addresses itself is that of bringing order into S by separating the sheep from the goats, distinguishing what merits acceptance as true from what does not. The process at issue such a coherence analysis accordingly calls for the following epistemic resources: 1. “Data”: theses that can serve as acceptance-candidates in the context of the inquiry, plausible contentions which, at best, are merely presumptively true (like the “data of sense”). These are not certified truths (or even probable truths) but theses that are in a position to make some claims on us for acceptance: They are prima facie truths in the sense that we would inline to grant them acceptance-as-true if (and this is a very big IF) there were no countervailing considerations on the scene. (The classical example of “data” in this sense are those of perception and memory.) 132 Rational Inquiry and the Quest for Truth 2. Plausibility ratings: comparative evaluations of our initial assessment (in the context of issue) of the relative acceptability of the “data.”This is a matter of their relative acceptability “at first glance” (so to speak) and in the first analysis, prior to their systematic evaluation.The plausibility -standing of truth-candidates is thus to be accorded without any prejudgments as to how these theses will fare in the final analysis.1 The process of coherence analysis consists in first classifying those relevantly...