Coherentism
Erik J Olsson · 2017
It is a fact of life that many of the information sources we consult in our daily occupations are not very reliable in themselves. Referring to C. I. Lewis in the connection of coherence justification for memories is particularly fitting since the justification of our reliance on memory was central to his epistemological project. It would seem difficult to maintain that coherence implies truth without also maintaining that more coherence implies a higher likelihood of truth. This chapter explores how to understand truth conduciveness. It is, as already hinted, implausible to think that coherence is truth conducive in the absence of further conditions: a well-composed piece of fiction may after all be more coherent than reality itself. The chapter briefly examines the psychological plausibility of these conditions in the context of memories. It discusses the recent so-called impossibility results for coherence and their significance.