Coherentism

Coherentism

“The central idea of coherentist theories of justification is that every justified belief is justified by virtue of its relations to other justified beliefs.” (60) This mean that there is no such thing as a basic belief. 

The two central ideas of Coherentism are as follows:

C1.    Only beliefs can justify other beliefs.  Nothing other than a belief can contribute to justification.
C2.    Every justified belief depends in part on other beliefs for its justification. (There are no justified beliefs)



Examples of:

Lacks positive coherence:

My dream is to travel around the world. I believe I am going on vacation every month because there are many beautiful places to see. 


Negative coherence

I believe I am going on vacation every week because I live in New Jersey.

Both are in conflict with the rest of system of coherentism because negative coherence shows that it goes against ones own general principles and lacking positive coherence shows that there is no support within the system to justify that belief.

Example of coherence

My dream is to travel around the world. I believe I am going on vacation every month because I just bought a TimeShare.

My belief that I am going to travel a lot is justified by having bought a Timeshare according to coherentism because there is positive coherence.