PHILOSOPHY OF

SCIENCE
PRESENTATION
JUSTIFICATION OF SCIENTIFIC
STATEMENT
COHERENTISM
OBJECTIVES
at the end of this report, my classmates
should be able to;
• define coherentism
• identify the two types of Justification
• differentiate the two types of Justification
• understand how non-inferential justification as
the basis of foundationalism
• discuss regress argument and its structure
• discuss the response of coherentism and
foundationalism towards regress arguments
• trace some coherentist philosophers and their
contribution to science.
Course outline
Coherentism defined
Two types of Justification
* inferential justification
* non-inferential justification
Non-inferential justification as the basis of
foundationalism
Regress Argument
* Structure of regress arguments
* Coherentism and Foundationalism’s
Responds to Regress
Coherentist Philosopher’s in Science
Coherentism defined

• Coherentism is a theory of epistemic justification. It

implies that for a belief to be justified it must belong
to a coherent system of beliefs. For a system of
beliefs to be coherent, the beliefs that make up that
system must "cohere" with one another. Someone's
belief is true if and only if it is coherent with all or
most of his or her other beliefs. Usually, coherence
is taken to imply something stronger than mere
consistency. Statements that are comprehensive and
meet the requirements of Occam's razor are usually
to be preferred.
Two types of Justification

• According to Plato, justification is an act of

providing some reasons or giving a
rational explanation for the belief. He says
“True opinion accompanied by reason is
knowledge”. Having justification for our
beliefs is, plausibly, about having good
reasons to think that they are true.
• For a belief to be justified, it seems, it must be inferred from
another belief. This type of justification is called inferential
justification. An inferential belief is held on the basis of
another belief. A belief has inferential justification when it is
justified because the belief on which it is based is justified.
This holds the basis of coherentism. A belief has non-
inferential justification when it is both justified and a non-
inferential belief. A non-inferential belief is not held on the
basis of another belief, which also hold the basis of
foundationalism.
• Coherentism thus claims, minimally, that not all knowledge
and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of non-
inferential knowledge or justified belief.
NON-INFERENTIAL JUSTIFICATION as
the BASIS OF FOUNDATIONALISM
• Foundationalism is a view about the structure of
justification or knowledge. The foundationalist's
thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified
belief rest ultimately on a foundation of non-
inferential knowledge or justified belief. A little
reflection suggests that the vast majority of the
propositions we know or justifiably believe have that
status only because we know or justifiably believe
other different propositions.
example
• We know or justifiably believe that Caesar was an
assassinated Roman leader, but only because we
know or justifiably believe (among other things) that
various historical texts describe the event. Arguably,
our knowledge (justified belief) about Caesar's death
also depends on our knowing (justifiably believing)
that the texts in question are reliable guides to the
past. Foundationalists want to contrast our inferential
knowledge (justified belief) about Caesar with a kind
of knowledge (justified belief) that doesn't involve
the having of other knowledge (justified belief).
Regress Argument
• Is a problem in epistemology and, in general, a
problem in any situation where a statement has
to be justified. According to this argument, any
proposition requires a justification. However,
any justification itself requires support. This
means that any proposition whatsoever can be
endlessly (infinitely) questioned, like a child who
asks "why?" over and over again. An infinite
regress arises when we ask what are the
justifications for the reasons themselves. If the
reasons count as knowledge, they must
themselves be justified with reasons for the
reasons, and so on, ad infinitum.
Structure of Regress Argument
• Assuming that knowledge is justified true belief, then:
• Suppose that P is some piece of knowledge. Then P is a justified true
belief.
• The only thing that can justify P is another statement – let's call it
P1; so P1 justifies P.
• But if P1 is to be a satisfactory justification for P, then we must know
that P1.
• But for P1 to be known, it must also be a justified true belief.
• That justification will be another statement - let's call it P2; so P2
justifies P1.
• But if P2 is to be a satisfactory justification for P1, then we must
know that P2 is true
• But for P2 to count as knowledge, it must itself be a justified true
belief.
• That justification will in turn be another statement - let's call it P3;
so P3 justifies P2.
• and so on, ad infinitum
 • There are three possible outcomes to this
questioning process:
1. the series is infinitely long, with every statement
justified by some other statement.
2. the series forms a loop, so that each statement is
ultimately involved in its own justification.
3. the series terminates with certain statements
having to be self-justifying.
RESPONSES OF REGRESS ARGUMENTS
• Skeptics maintain that the regress cannot be avoided
and hence that justification is impossible.
Foundationalists and coherentists agree that the
regress can be avoided and that justification is
possible. They disagree about how to avoid the
regress. According to foundationalism, the regress is
found by finding a stopping point for the regress in
terms of foundational beliefs that are justified but
not wholly justified by some relationship to further
beliefs. Coherentists deny the need and the
possibility of finding such stopping points for the
regress. Sometimes coherentism is described as the
view that allows that justification can proceed in a
circle (as long as the circle is large enough), and that
is one logically possible version of the view.
FOUNDATIONALISM’S RESPONSE

• One might conclude that there must be some

statements that, for some reason, do not need
justification. This view is called foundationalism.
For instance, rationalists such as Descartes and
Spinoza developed axiomatic systems that relied
on statements that were taken to be self-evident:
"I think therefore I am" is the most famous
example.
• Foundationalism relies on the claim that it is not
necessary to ask for justification of certain
propositions, or that they are self-justifying.
example
• If someone makes an observational statement, such as
"it is raining", it does seem reasonable to ask how
they know—did they look out the window? Did
someone else tell them? Did they just come in
shaking their umbrella? Coherentism insists that it is
always reasonable to ask for a justification for any
statement. Coherentism contends that
foundationalism provides an arbitrary spot to stop
asking for justification and so that it does not provide
reasons to think that certain beliefs do not need
justification
COHERENTISM’S RESPONSE

• Coherentism denies the soundness of the regression

argument. The regression argument makes the
assumption that the justification for a proposition takes
the form of another proposition: P" justifies P', which in
turn justifies P. For coherentism, justification is a
holistic process.
• Inferential justification for the belief that P is
nonlinear. This means that P" and P' are not
epistemically prior to P. Rather, the beliefs that P",
P', and P work together to achieve epistemic
justification. Catherine Elgin has expressed the
same point differently, arguing that beliefs must be
"mutually consistent, cotenable, and supportive.
That is, the components must be reasonable in light
of one another. Since both cotenability and
supportiveness are matters of degree, coherence is
too." Usually the system of belief is taken to be the
complete set of beliefs of the individual or group,
that is, their theory of the world.
• It is necessary for coherentism to explain in some detail what
it means for a system to be coherent. At the least, coherence
must include logical consistency. It also usually requires some
degree of integration of the various components of the system.
A system that contains more than one unrelated explanation of
the same phenomenon is not as coherent as one that uses only
one explanation, all other things being equal. Conversely, a
theory that explains divergent phenomena using unrelated
explanations is not as coherent as one that uses only one
explanation for those divergent phenomena. These
requirements are variations on Occams razor. Finally, the
greater the number of phenomena explained by the system, the
greater its coherence.
COHERENTIST
PHILOSOPHER’S in
SCIENCE
Carl Gustav Hempel

• Hempel and Oppenheim’s essay "Studies in the Logic of

Explanation," published in volume 15 of the journal
Philosophy of Science, gave an account of the deductive-
nomological explanation. A scientific explanation of a fact is a
deduction of a statement (called the explanandum) that
describes the fact we want to explain; the premises (called the
explanans) are scientific laws and suitable initial conditions.
For an explanation to be acceptable, the explanans must be
true.
Wilfrid Sellars
• Sellars was a significant philosopher of science and a staunch
defender of coherentism. This is the basic reasoning behind Sellars’s
scientific realism. He boldly proclaims “In the dimension of
describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all
things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.
• rejects the “layer-cake” view that there are three distinct levels of
assertion in the empirical sciences: observation level claims of
particular fact, empirical generalizations in the observation
language, and, finally, claims in a theoretical language which
function to systematize the empirical generalizations.
Gilbert Harman
• Harman wrote an early discussion of "inference to the best
explanation" and argued in later work that all inference or
reasoning should be conceived as rational "change in view,"
balancing conservatism against coherence, where simplicity
and explanatory considerations are relevant to positive
coherence and where avoiding inconsistency is relevant to
negative coherence. He has expressed doubts about appeals to
a priori knowledge and has argued that logic and decision
theory are theories of implication and consistency and should
not be interpreted as theories that can be followed: they are not
theories of inference or reasoning.
• In Thought and Change in View Harman argued that intuitions
about knowledge are useful in thinking about inference. More
recently, he and Brett Sherman have suggested that knowledge
can rest on assumptions that are not themselves known. He
and Sanjeev Kulkarni have suggested that elementary
statistical learning theory offers a kind of response to the
philosophical problem of induction.
REFERENCES

• http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/archives/wi
n2003/entries/justep-coherence/
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1
24581/coherentism
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism