Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between coherence and epistemic justification. Part One is primarily critical. In a preliminary chapter, I outline three reasons coherentist theories of justification are attractive and a basic anticoherentist argument which concludes that pure coherentist theories of justification cannot account for justifying reasons. In subsequent chapters I flesh out this argument through an investigation of the coherentist theories of Keith Lehrer and Laurence BonJour. These views provide insights into the nature of coherence and its relationship to justification, but neither provides an adequate view of justifying reasons. Part Two is constructive. As a first step, I draw a distinction between the internalist project of providing an account of responsible belief and the externalist project of stating a definition or analysis of "knowledge", arguing that justification is best understood in the context of an internalist account of responsible belief. In a second step I clarify the concept of coherence, distinguishing three kinds of coherence. "Propositional coherence" belongs to sets of propositions. "Doxastic coherence" is a property of sets of beliefs, which is produced by both propositional and psychological connections. "Dynamic coherence" by contrast belongs to systems of beliefs that receive and process input from experience in a way that maintains a stable core of beliefs over change. I argue that none of these notions enables us to construct an account of justification in which coherence alone produces justifying reasons. To provide the background for a positive account of the relationship between coherence and justification, I outline an internalist theory of justification according to which experience provides nondoxastic reasons for beliefs, producing direct prima facie justification. Given this understanding of justification, I develop a theory of epistemic responsibility according to which coherentist considerations and methods play important roles as a believer seeks to be epistemically responsible. The resulting theory of justification and responsible belief shares many of the features which make coherentist theories attractive, yet provides a more adequate account of justifying reasons