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Explanatory coherentism
Also known as: explanatory coherentists
Facts (15)
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Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Dec 14, 2005 13 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.
claimA significant problem for explanatory coherentists is the difficulty of defining, in non-epistemic terms, what makes one explanation objectively better than another competing 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).
claimA challenge for explanatory coherentists is to provide a nonepistemic explanation for why one explanation is superior to competing explanations, such as the evil demon hypothesis.
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 posits that a subject is justified in believing a hypothesis (H) when that hypothesis provides the best explanation for the subject's perceptual experiences.
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.
claimExplanatory coherentism and reliability coherentism are both versions of doxastic coherentism.
Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2019 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Dec 14, 2005 1 fact
claimExplanatory coherentists argue that a person loses justification for a belief if an alternative explanation for their perceptual experience is at least as good as the original hypothesis, such as the knowledge that one has taken a hallucinatory drug.
Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Dec 14, 2005 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.