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Coherentism, Truth, and Witness Agreement

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Abstract

Coherentists on epistemic justification claim that all justification is inferential, and that beliefs, when justified, get their justification together (not in isolation) as members of a coherent belief system. Some recent work in formal epistemology shows that “individual credibility” is needed for “witness agreement” to increase the probability of truth and generate a high probability of truth. It can seem that, from this result in formal epistemology, it follows that coherentist justification is not truth-conducive, that it is not the case that, under the requisite conditions, coherentist justification increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. I argue that this does not follow.

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Notes

  1. Coherentists deny that there can be noninferential justification. But coherentists need not, and should not, deny that there can be noninferential belief-formation, that is, belief-formation not consisting in an inference from beliefs. See BonJour (1985, sec. 6.1).

  2. On foundationalism, a belief can be justified even if it is not evidentially supported by beliefs. On some varieties of foundationalism, a belief can be justified in virtue of being evidentially supported by a perceptual experience. Paul Moser (1989) has a sophisticated view along these lines.

  3. For general discussion of the elements of coherence, see BonJour (1985, Chap. 5). For discussion of probabilistic conceptions of coherence, see Olsson (2005a, pp. 95–102), Siebel (2005), and Douven and Meijs (2007). For a nonprobabilistic account of coherence, see Lehrer (2000, Chap. 6). For discussion of forms of coherentism requiring, for justification, more than coherence, e.g., reliability, see Roche (2006). It might be that coherentists should hold that what matters for justification is not the coherence of the subject’s belief system as a whole, but the coherence of a certain proper subset (or “module”) of that system. See Lycan (1996) and Olsson (1997).

  4. Just what the requisite conditions are is a main issue of this paper.

  5. A related, but distinct, question is whether, ceteris paribus, greater coherentist justification makes for a greater probability of truth. For discussion, see Klein and Warfield (1994, 1996), Merricks (1995), Cross (1999), Shogenji (1999, 2005b, 2007), Bovens and Olsson (2000, 2002), Olsson (2001, 2002, 2005a, b), Bovens and Hartmann (2003, 2005, 2006), Huemer (2007), Meijs and Douven (2007), and Schupbach (2008).

  6. I shall assume, as seems plausible, that epistemic justification is truth-conducive. This is a generous assumption. If epistemic justification is not truth-conducive (in the sense in question), and it is not incumbent on coherentists to show that coherentist justification is truth-conducive, then the formal epistemological result explained in §II, below, poses no threat to coherentism. Even if, contrary to what I shall argue, the result in question showed that coherentist justification is not truth-conducive, it might still be that coherentism is the correct theory of epistemic justification. For discussion, in addition to that in this paper, of how to understand the “truth connection,” i.e. the connection between justification and truth, see e.g., Lehrer and Cohen (1983), Cohen (1984), Conee (2004), and Kvanvig (2007).

  7. Erik Olsson (2005a, pp. 12–24) argues that witness agreement, where all the witnesses testify to the truth of the same proposition, is a case of (perhaps high or even maximal) coherence. Cf. van Cleve (2005, p. 174).

  8. Admittedly, the case as it stands is underdescribed.

  9. This would depend on whether the conditions in question are the requisite conditions.

  10. Or at least can be read as doing so. But see §VI, below, where I suggest an alternative reading of BonJour’s position.

  11. See also Bovens and Olsson (2000), and Olsson and Shogenji (2004). Two comments are in order. First, strictly speaking, the thesis defended by Huemer, Olsson, and Shogenji has an independence clause, stating that the various witness reports are probabilistically independent of each other (conditional on the truth or falsity of the hypothesis reported). This clause is quite important. See Huemer (2007). See also Olsson (2005a, pp. 58–60) and Shogenji (2005a, p. 321). But for the purposes of this paper, the independence clause may be ignored. Second, though Olsson and Shogenji side with Lewis in arguing for (A), Olsson and Shogenji disagree with Lewis on certain other related issues. See Olsson and Shogenji (2004), and Olsson (2005a).

  12. A witness can have no individual credibility with respect to some propositions (e.g., propositions in quantum mechanics) and yet have some individual credibility with respect to other propositions (e.g., propositions about the weather). Individual credibility need not be construed as attaching to witnesses (relative to propositions). It may instead be construed as attaching to witness reports; Lewis and BonJour talk in this fashion. Nothing of substance hinges on which construal is used. I shall continue to speak of individual credibility as attaching to witnesses.

  13. See also Huemer (1997, pp. 470–471).

  14. (C) relies on several assumptions. One assumption is that a witness is a truth-teller, a liar, or a “randomizer.” A randomizer is a witness who testifies randomly. Suppose, in a particular case, there are n suspects, s 1, . . . , s n , and they are all equally likely to be the criminal. Suppose a certain witness w is a randomizer, and is set to incriminate one of the suspects. Then, regardless of which of the suspects is guilty, the probability of w’s incriminating s i , for any i, is 1/n.

  15. It is being assumed that if there are n suspects, there are n-1 ways to lie.

  16. (B) is simply a specification of how to understand the notion of a witness’s having no individual credibility. The substantive claims are (A) and (C).

  17. (E), like (B), is not a substantive claim. (E) merely specifies how to understand the notion of a cognizer’s having no individual credibility.

  18. I noted above that (C) relies on the assumption that a witness is a truth-teller, a liar, or a randomizer. Accordingly, (F) should be understood as relying on the assumption that a cognizer’s processes are reliable, unreliable, or random. Suppose, in a particular case, there are n possible belief contents, p 1, . . . , p n , and they are all equally likely to be correct. Suppose a certain process r is random, and is set to produce a belief with one of the contents. Then, regardless of which of the contents is correct, the probability of r’s “picking” p i , for any i, is 1/n.

  19. I take it that if (D), (E), and (F) do not lead to (G), then neither do (A), (B), and (C).

  20. See Bovens and Olsson (2000), Olsson (2002, 2005a), Olsson and Shogenji (2004), and Shogenji (2005a).

  21. Recall, from §I, that I am assuming that epistemic justification is truth-conducive, and so unless doxastic coherence (coherentist justification) is truth-conducive, coherentism is not the correct theory of epistemic justification.

  22. (H) says: Doxastic coherence is truth-conducive only if under conditions of no individual credibility, doxastic coherence both increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. (D) says: Under conditions of no individual credibility, doxastic coherence neither increases the probability of truth nor generates a high probability of truth. (D) thus implies that: It is not the case that under conditions of no individual credibility, doxastic coherence both increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. Hence, if (D) is correct, the consequent of (H) is false. Hence, if (H) is correct, and (D) is correct, it follows that the antecedent of (H) is false, in which case (G) is correct.

  23. I am assuming that when a cognizer forms, say, a perceptual belief, there are two or more ways for her to get things wrong.

  24. It might be argued, in favor of (I), that for doxastic coherence to be truth-conducive, it needs to be the case that under any conditions in which there can be doxastic coherence, even conditions in which the cognizer is much more likely to have unreliable processes than reliable processes, doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. I consider this proposal in §V.

  25. I am simplifying a bit. I take it to be plausible that, with respect to the issue of reliability, the requisite conditions are conditions of ignorance as to the reliability of the cognizer’s processes. It might be, though, that the requisite conditions involve more than just ignorance as to reliability.

  26. (K) does not say, or imply, that doxastic coherence is truth-conducive only if the only conditions in which doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth are conditions in which the cognizer is just as likely to have unreliable processes as reliable processes.

  27. (K) says that: Doxastic coherence is truth-conducive if and only if under conditions in which the cognizer is just as likely to have unreliable processes as reliable processes, doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. (K) thus implies that: It is false that doxastic coherence is truth-conducive only if under conditions in which the cognizer is more likely to have unreliable processes than reliable processes, doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. (This inference fails if the following conditional holds: If doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth under conditions in which the cognizer is just as likely to have unreliable processes as reliable processes, then doxastic coherence increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth under conditions in which the cognizer is more likely to have unreliable processes than reliable processes. But this conditional seems false.).

  28. BonJour is now a foundationalist. See BonJour (1999), and BonJour and Sosa (2003).

  29. This is the requirement that a belief system “contain laws attributing a high degree of reliability to a reasonable variety of cognitively spontaneous beliefs (including in particular those kinds of introspective beliefs which are required for the recognition of other cognitively spontaneous beliefs)” (1985, p. 141).

  30. BonJour’s argument makes no appeal to witness agreement. In fact, in Chapter 8, the chapter in which he tries to give a metajustification for his coherentism, BonJour discusses witness agreement not at all.

  31. For BonJour, one’s grasp of one’s belief system is not at issue. One may simply take it for granted, when engaged in epistemological investigation, that one’s grasp of one’s belief system is by and large correct. See BonJour’s discussion of the “Doxastic Presumption” (1985, pp. 103–106). What is at issue, for BonJour, is whether one’s external-world beliefs are correct. BonJour’s metajustification is meant to be of help in defending one’s external-world beliefs against the external-world skeptic.

  32. Reliability should here be understood so that reliability comes in degrees, and a process can be reliable (though not fully reliable) even if it does not invariably produce true beliefs.

  33. I am glossing over an important but, for my purposes, tangential distinction between justification and “well-foundedness.”

  34. See e.g., Goldman (1979).

  35. (L*), like (L), leads to (I) and (H).

  36. Unreliability should here be understood so that unreliability comes in degrees, and a process can be unreliable (though not fully unreliable) even if it does not invariably produce false beliefs.

  37. A better test, it seems, is whether evidentialist justification increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth under conditions of ignorance as to the reliability of the cognizer’s processes. (Again, I am simplifying. The suggestion is that, with respect to the issue of reliability, the requisite conditions are conditions of ignorance as to the reliability of the cognizer’s processes).

  38. (C) should be understood so that conditions in which a witness is just as likely to be a truth-teller as a liar are conditions in which she has some individual credibility—her testifying that p increases the probability of p. See Olsson (2005a, p. 71, pp. 218–219). (F) should thus be understood similarly.

  39. Though, strictly speaking, BonJour speaks of individual credibility as attaching to witness reports, not to witnesses.

  40. James van Cleve (2005) reads BonJour in this manner. See also Shogenji (2005a, pp. 314–315). Cf. Olsson (2005a, p. 67, n. 4). If this reading of BonJour is correct, and if Lewis understands “no individual credibility” as in (B), then BonJour’s and Lewis’s claims are compatible. It can be true that, in some cases, witness agreement increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth even though, for each witness w, Pr(p | w said that p) is less than or equal to .5, indeed, even though Pr(p | w said that p) is much less than .5, and yet also be true that witness agreement neither increases the probability of truth nor generates a high probability of truth when, for each witness w, Pr(p | w said that p) is equal to Pr(p). There might be reason, however, for doubting that Lewis understands “no individual credibility” as in (B). See van Cleve (2005, pp. 170–171).

  41. Or should hold, to be consistent.

  42. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, “no individual credibility” is to be understood as in (E).

  43. I take it that if (1) and (2) are true, coherentists as such hold that the requisite conditions (the conditions under which doxastic coherence should be expected to increase the probability of truth and generate a high probability of truth) are conditions of no noninferential justification and thus of no individual credibility. Hence (3).

  44. Coherentists appeal to cases of this sort in arguing against externalist theories such as process reliabilism. See BonJour (1985, Chap. 3) and Lehrer (2000, Chap. 8).

  45. Or at least we can suppose. Surely there can be cases in which there is a low prior probability that the President is in New York City.

  46. See e.g., Davidson (2000).

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Gregg Franzwa, Nicholaos Jones, William Melanson, Michael Roche, and Joshua Smith for very helpful questions and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also wish to thank audiences at the 1st Annual USA Philosophy Workshop: Perspectives on Coherentism, the 42nd Meeting of the North Texas Philosophical Association, and the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Central Division, where I presented earlier drafts of this paper. The completion of this work was financially supported by the Junior Faculty Summer Research Program at Texas Christian University.

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    William A. Roche

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Roche, W.A. Coherentism, Truth, and Witness Agreement. Acta Anal 25, 243–257 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0065-1

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