Explanatory coherentism ↔ justification

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related 3.46 — strongly supporting 10 facts

The concept of justification is the central focus of explanatory coherentism, which defines it as the process of deriving belief support from the best explanation of perceptual experiences as described in [1], [2], and [3].

Facts (10)

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Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Matthias Steup, Ram Neta · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 9 facts

claimExplanatory coherentism and reliability coherentism, as versions of doxastic coherentism, are criticized for making excessive intellectual demands on ordinary subjects who are unlikely to hold the specific background beliefs required for justification.

claimExplanatory coherentism accounts for a lack of justification by noting that if an alternative explanation for an experience (E) is as good as or better than the hypothesis (H), the subject is not justified in believing (H).

claimAccording to explanatory coherentism, the justification for a belief (H) is structured by two beliefs: (1) the subject has a visual experience (E) of a hat looking blue, and (2) the subject's experience (E) is best explained by the assumption that the hypothesis (H) is true.

claimAttempting to define a better explanation by appealing to whether a person is already justified in believing the components of that explanation creates a circular argument, as explanatory coherentism is intended to explain the source of justification itself.

claimA proposed solution to distinguish between better and worse explanations is to assert that if one explanation (E1) includes a proposition that a subject is not justified in believing, while another explanation (E2) does not, then (E2) is the better explanation.

claimExplanatory coherentism is an epistemological approach where justification for a belief is derived from the belief being the best explanation for one's perceptual experiences.

claimExplanatory coherentism posits that for a subject to be justified in believing a hypothesis (H), it is not necessary that the subject actually believes the supporting propositions (1) and (2), but it is necessary that the subject has justification for believing (1) and (2).

perspectiveThe proposal to define better explanations by referencing justified beliefs is criticized for circular reasoning, as explanatory coherentism is intended to explain the source of justification itself.

claimExplanatory coherentism faces a circularity problem if it attempts to define what makes one explanation better than another by using the concept of justification, as this would make the account uninformative.

Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 fact

claimDoxastic coherentism, which includes both explanatory and reliability coherentism, faces the objection that it makes excessive intellectual demands on ordinary subjects by assuming they hold specific background beliefs required for justification.