Coherentism and Its Limits: Definition & Criticism

Imagine waking up on a seemingly normal morning and discovering that all the knowledge you—and most of the world—held accountable up to that moment was inaccurate and unreliable. While this seems like an implausible scenario, it is logically possible for some groundbreaking discoveries to shake the core beliefs that the majority of humanity holds. Is there any way to ensure that what we believe in is grounded and accountable? This is the quest that epistemology—a branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge and belief—attempts to investigate.

Imagine spending all your life believing that the sun rotates around the earth. All your relatives, friends, and acquaintances are also convinced of this, and everyone you know seems to think the same way. All the predictions and claims made, all the scientific discoveries, rely on this undeniable truth, and their accountability is unquestioned as they are thought to be grounded in an unshakable belief.

Things proceed in this direction, up to the day in which it is discovered that the earth is the one rotating around the sun and that the previously unshakable truths are inaccurate and ought to be rejected. All the knowledge relying on the sun rotating around the earth ought also to be reconsidered and potentially discarded. Unshakable truths are undeniable just up to the day they are disproven. How can one then build a framework of knowledge that can be relied upon with some degree of certainty?

Epistemology, the subfield of philosophy in charge of answering questions about knowledge, has attempted to find solutions to this problem at length. Its role is to question how we know what we know and how we can ensure that the knowledge we hold is, and will remain, reliable. Given the complexity of the matter, a unanimous answer is yet to be reached. However, several theories and epistemological frameworks have been developed to provide an account of how knowledge is obtained and how to ensure its reliability.

The Nature of Belief

Epistemology is grounded in the notion of belief. A belief can be described as potential knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is yet to be verified. For a belief to be verified, it must be established whether it is true or false, i.e., assign to it a truth value. For example, the belief that it’s raining outside can be verified by looking out the window or stepping out the door and determining whether the belief ought to be confirmed or rejected based on the observation one makes.

Given that we live in a world in which phenomena and facts are connected, beliefs about the world we live in cannot exist in isolation from one another. On the other hand, they are meant to create a support network so that true beliefs can provide grounds for the development and the reliability of other beliefs. Epistemological theories founded on this principle are held accountable by the fact that the knowledge granted by each belief is grounded on other beliefs that have previously been proven.

For example, imagine the belief that it is raining being grounded on the belief that one can see and feel water falling from the sky when outdoors. The latter belief is then grounded in the belief that one’s senses of sight and touch give an input, which is typical of when one sees and feels water falling from the sky. Hence, the fact that each belief is grounded on another belief that has been verified allows one to account for all the beliefs in the chain.

The above account of how knowledge is obtained and confirmed is quite convincing, as it provides a clear solution on how to ensure the accountability of each belief. However, it begs the question of what stands at the end of the imaginary chain of beliefs, i.e., is there any belief that entertains the function of core, foundational, or basic belief and that supports the whole chain? The clear alternative to this option would be an infinite regress, i.e., an imaginary chain of belief perpetrated to infinity, and with no actual foundational belief that holds the whole chain.

Both solutions may be considered problematic. Theories or arguments that lead to infinite regress are usually considered fallacious and discarded by philosophers. On the other hand, the epistemological theory that claims the existence of a foundational or basic belief at the end of a chain of beliefs exists and is known as foundationalism. The main issue that foundationalists face is determining what belief is certain enough to entertain the status of foundational and core. Even if this had to be established, the issue would remain debated, as it seems unlikely for there to be a belief so certain that it could never be overturned.

The epistemological theory of coherentism arises as a solution to the challenge of foundationalism and proposes a way for beliefs to support one another without necessarily relying on a foundational belief that holds the whole chain.

The Theory of Coherentism 

Coherentism is an epistemological theory, and its goal is to provide an account of how knowledge can be obtained and relied upon. In response to foundationalism, which attempts to account for knowledge through a chain of beliefs in which each belief is supported by the previous ones in the chain, coherentists argue that beliefs are not figuratively aligned in a chain-like manner but rather disposed in a web. The figurative picture of the web of beliefs was first developed by Willard Van Orman Quine—a 20th-century American philosopher famous not only for his rejection of foundationalism but also for his work on the philosophy of science —and J.S. Ullian, in their text “The Web of Belief.”

According to the coherentist epistemological framework, beliefs are arranged in a web in which each belief, instead of being supported solely by the beliefs that precede it in the chain, is supported by the whole web and by each belief within the web itself. It follows that, through this system, the coherentist would develop a framework according to which each belief is at the same time supported by all the other beliefs and a supporter of all other beliefs. Within the web, there is no need for a foundational or basic belief, as there is no end of the chain that needs support, but rather, each belief obtains approval through the web. Hence, the web is epistemologically self-sufficient and self-justified, overcoming the challenge of finding a core basic belief previously encountered by foundationalism.

Despite presenting itself as a solution to foundationalism, coherentism comes with its own issues. For example, the theory begs the question of how one can add a new belief to the web or, even more strikingly, how one can ensure that the whole web is not in itself unjustified and ungrounded.

In reply to the first question, it can be said that adding a belief to the preexisting web is possible as long as the newly added belief is not in contradiction with any of the beliefs of the web. If that is the case, some revision is needed in that either one or more of the preexisting beliefs must be discarded as they revealed themselves unaccountable under the evidence of a newly developed belief, or the new belief must be discarded as in contrast with the previously held—and still considered accountable—beliefs.

Hence, the web of beliefs can accept no contradiction among beliefs within itself, but it can be modified according to newly discovered beliefs. Therefore, each belief can potentially be discarded if revealed inaccurately under the presence of new evidence, and new beliefs can be added accordingly.

However, while the first question can be answered as just shown, the second—how one can ensure the accountability of the whole web—is the most problematic for the coherentist epistemological framework.

Foundationalism or Relativism: A Solution for Coherentism  

Coherentism faces the challenge of expounding the basis for its grounding and reliability. Hence, two solutions could potentially be developed to overcome the problem. The first involves pairing coherentism with the foundationalist epistemological theory, and the second involves pairing it with the relativist epistemological theory.

Foundationalism involves the establishment of a foundational or basic belief that can act as support for all the other beliefs that one holds. While coherentism claims to overcome the challenge of the need for a basic belief by arguing that, within its framework, all beliefs support each other in a web-like system, for the entire web to hold with some accountability, the need for a basic belief still stands. On this account, coherentism would be condemned to the same objections that affect foundationalism.

Alternatively, coherentism could redeem itself by relying on a relativist epistemological framework. Epistemic relativism is a theory that claims that knowledge could not possibly be objective, but is rather determined by the social and cultural framework that one lives in. Hence, there is no point in determining what is the nature of knowledge and how to hold beliefs universally accountable, and one should rather accept that knowledge does not look alike for all individuals and societal groups.

By relying on epistemological relativism, one could argue that there is no actual need for a basic belief to support the web-like system, but rather that each system supports itself through the notion of knowledge held by individuals and societal groups. This would also account for the fact that disagreements around knowledge are the norm, and the more groups of people differ in terms of culture and societal norms, the more their beliefs differ drastically.

Given the considerations made in the preceding paragraph, one may wonder whether there is any reason to maintain coherentism as an independent epistemological theory. If coherentism must rely on foundationalism or relativism to hold, it may reasonably be argued that there is no need for coherentism per se and that its theoretical predictions could be encompassed within foundationalism or relativism. However, while this reading may have some merit, it is essential to remark on the outstanding accomplishments that coherentism has brought within the field of epistemology.

Coherentism has allowed the field to distance itself from the sole possibility of knowledge being represented in a linear, chain-like manner and to rather move to the more realistic figurative depiction of knowledge as a web of beliefs that support one another. Given that the knowledge one holds operates as a framework in which all individual pieces contribute to the overall system, the foundationalist representation remains quite inaccurate and coherentism has led to important insights.

Hence, while coherentism is not wholly complete and self-sufficient as an epistemological theory, it would be a mistake to fully dispose of its findings and intuitions in light of the influence that they have had on further developments in the field of epistemology.