Jason Bentley

 

There are many epistemologies, or theories on how people know things; a couple of the big ones are foundationalism and coherentism. I’m going to briefly describe each in turn, and give a little critique. Whatever – it’s interesting to me, and it’s my entry.

 

Coherentism claims that the only measure of the legitimacy of our truth-claims, or beliefs, is their coherence – in other words, their consistency as a total system. As long as none of my beliefs or claims contradict each other, everything is good. If some of them do contradict each other, then something has to be jettisoned or modified, but coherentism doesn’t say how. For instance, if I believe (1) that zebras are a myth, but also (2) I just saw a zebra trot across the savannah on my safari vacation; then something needs to change. I can start believing in zebras, for one; but, just as legitimately, I can decide that I didn’t actually see one at all (hallucinations, perhaps?), or I can come up with some other explanation (maybe somebody painted stripes on a horse to play a joke on me). Any change toward consistency is acceptable (as long as it doesn’t create conflict with yet other beliefs).

 

Foundationalism also values consistency, but differs from coherentism by identifying certain epistemologically privileged truth-claims. These “special” propositions (or beliefs; the terms are interchangeable in this entry) form the foundation on which all other propositions are judged. The most common foundational elements are sense experience and logic (there are systems that use others, but I’m going to stick with these two for the remainder of this entry). So, to take the example above, if I didn’t believe in zebras, but I just saw one; then some belief has got to change. If I’m a foundationalist, however, my options tend to be more constrained (limited) than the coherentist’s. If sense experience is part of my foundation, I’m probably not going to deny the zebra’s existence (since I just saw it). After ruling out a paint job, I’ll probably start believing in them.

 

So, to summarize, coherence calls for the consistency of every part of a belief (or propositional) system with every other part; while foundation calls for the consistency of every part of a belief system with some set of core (foundational) beliefs. So coherentism and foundationalism turn out to be quite similar. They both value consistency. This is natural – it wouldn’t make much sense to have a bunch of contradictory beliefs. The big difference is that while coherentists see all beliefs as equal, for a foundationalist some beliefs (normally sense experience and logic) are more important than others.

 

Let’s compare the two theories a little more deeply. To start with, I want to talk a little bit about logic. For those of you who’ve studied formal logic, you know that it’s all about testing for validity; and validity is all about the relationship between propositions. Some propositions don’t make sense together (i.e, “Pete’s a dog” and “Pete’s a cat”). Some propositions don’t make sense unless others are also true (i.e., “Pete’s a dog” only works if “Pete has four legs” is also true). That would be implication. [Note to the reader: take things at face value. None of this, “well maybe there are two Pete’s” or “maybe Pete got run over and lost a leg.” Keep it simple, OK?] Basically, though, you’re checking to make sure that propositions make sense together – that they’re consistent. So my claim is that logic is, at least to a huge degree, all about consistency of propositions; and I don’t think that claim should be overly controversial.

 

Why does that matter? You’ll see in just a second. For now, shelve it, and let’s talk a little bit more about coherence theory.

 

Earlier, we said that if my beliefs contradict one another, something has to change. For example, if I don’t believe in zebras, but I see one on my safari; I’ve got to either change one of these beliefs, or come up with a non-contradictory explanation (like painted horses). I’ve got two beliefs that don’t go together.

 

Let me suggest, however, that there are actually three beliefs here that don’t go together: (1) there’re no zebras, (2) I just saw a zebra, and (3) my beliefs should be consistent. Why not just dump #3? Why not believe that something that doesn’t exist just walked by? In fact, if I reject coherence, I can just believe anything and everything I want. In fact, once I reject coherence, I can then accept coherence theory right back into the fold of my belief system. I can believe in coherence theory yet reject the importance of consistency.

 

The first thought that pops to mind is probably “that makes no sense.” And it’s just this kind of chaos that coherence theory avoids. Coherence makes everything fit together; it does this by prioritizing consistency in my belief system. But what allows me to check for consistency among my beliefs? Refer back, and you’ll see that the answer is logic. Coherence theory, then, avoids intellectual chaos by making simple logic the foundation of the system.

 

That should sound familiar to you. I mean, I put the word “foundation” in there, for goodness’ sake! Conventional foundation theory claims that logic, along with sense experience, is the foundation for judging the legitimacy of beliefs. Actually, foundation theorists claim something much stronger: without prioritizing some propositions (beliefs, supposed facts, or whatever you want to call them), we can’t know anything. Instead, we end up with the intellectual chaos of believing anything and everything pick-and-choose.

 

The point of the last few paragraphs has been to point out that coherence theory is like conventional foundation theory, but prioritizing only simple logic (consistency), not sense experience. We’ve already noted the advantage of prioritizing logic (avoiding intellectual chaos); but what are the advantages and disadvantages of prioritizing or not prioritizing sense experience?

 

Well, one thing we can say is that if you plan to live in this world – and I think most of us do – then you’d better make a habit of paying attention to what you see, hear, smell and so on. Your sense experience, in fact, turns out to be your only external input – ignore the senses, and you get no information about the outside world. So on the surface the conventional foundationalist appears to be on the right track: sense experience to gather your information, logic to do something with it.

 

On the other hand, we have to admit that our senses sometimes mislead us. At the very least, what we think we see, or what we think we hear, may turn out not to match reality very well. There can be many causes for this – poor vision or hearing, something very far away, darkness or background noise, insanity or medication overdose. So maybe coherence theorists are on to something by reducing the importance placed on our senses.

 

But let’s take a closer look. We know that sometimes our senses mislead us – but how do we know? Do we have some alternate information source? No, we don’t. We check the accuracy of one set of sense perceptions with another set of sense perceptions. Out of the corner of my eye I think I see a purple elephant flying by; however, I also think that there are no purple flying elephants; so what do I do? I look again. This time I see that it’s a purple cloth fluttering by in the wind. Basically, when we sense something that turns out to be inconsistent with something we believe, or with other things we’ve experienced with our senses, we take a second, closer look; and we either revise our beliefs, or clarify what it was that we actually saw (or heard, or whatever). So it looks like the foundationalist is right after all – yes, sometimes our senses mislead us, but they’re still all we have to rely on as an information source.

 

There’s one more problem to consider, though. The foundation theorist gets along fine as long as we can verify one set of sense perceptions with another. What happens, though, if we think our sense experience misses the nature of reality totally? What if this world is an illusion, and a deeper oneness lies beneath? What if our brains are jacked into a virtual reality world? Or what if we’re all suffering a mass delusion? Or worse, what if I’m suffering delusion, all by myself, tied up in a mental ward somewhere, all the doctors and nurses and orderlies watching me with pity in their eyes? All of these scenarios posit a set of circumstances that leaves me unable to trust any of my sense experiences.

 

Now it looks like foundationalism is just out of luck. And foundation theorists admit that, don’t they? The core claim of the conventional foundationalist is that without logic and sense experience, we can’t know anything. And that’s just the problem these scenarios create.

 

So does that leave coherence theorists as the winners? Not quite. After all, coherence theory denies that I can ever know about the “real world” in any of these situations, too. As long as my false picture of the world is consistent, I’ll never notice. But coherentists never said anything about sense experience being foundational in the first place; that’s at least better than assigning priority to untrustworthy information, isn’t it? The coherentists can’t offer a solution, but at least they didn’t recommend relying on bad intelligence!

 

But you’ve still got to ask – what now? I mean, you’ve got this whole big question – am I really a brain in a jar, or a lunatic in a psychiatric hospital? – and you can’t give any good answers, because the whole point of the question is to throw all of your sense experience (and your memories) into doubt. So what do you say?

 

I say, who cares? You’ve lived your entire life with no proof that you weren’t a crazy brain in a virtual reality jar suffering a mass delusion with all your lobotomized friends, and you’ve gotten along just fine so far. That’s trite - if I really am a brain in a jar, I’d like to know it, and if I really were crazy, I’d like a glimpse through my madness, so that I could recover.

 

These scenarios, however, make it impossible to ever know; and that’s the key. In The Matrix, Neo could escape; and if you’re the right kind of mystical Hindu, you believe that you can see through maya to Brahman. In these and similar examples, the key point is that you can know the truth. But what happens when you can’t?

 

Let’s put it simply – if I can’t ever wake up in my jar, if I can’t ever recover from my insanity, if I can’t ever reach through to Brahman, then for me, this is all there is. I can either live until I die, or stare glumly at the wall until I die. One lifestyle is fun and enjoyable, whether it’s “real” or not; the other is boring and painful and totally sucks.

 

In the end, I think all the perspectives presented in this entry are pretty much equally legitimate. You can deny sense experience and logic – that’s legitimate, I think, because you can’t prove sense experience (since sense experience would have to provide the data, and that would be circular); and you can’t prove (or disprove) logic, as you could have all the data in the world and you couldn’t operate on it (since that would require the use of logic – circular again). You’d just be left with a cognitive junkheap, which most people don’t find all that attractive. Coherentists opt out of the chaos and accept logic (specifically in the form of consistency) to bring order and systematicity to their beliefs, but they too recognize the weaknesses of relying on sense experience. The foundationalists take the logic and the senses, realizing that even if there’s some “hidden reality,” if we can never experience it, there’s no reason to worry about it anyway.

 

But that’s not really the end, because coherence and foundation theories aren’t really the point anyway. The point is – if you can’t experience something, you can’t experience it. You can’t prove or disprove it, and you can’t do anything with it. Unless you can figure out a way around that fact, why worry about it? Just enjoy life – that’s all there is. That’s the end.