Source: Analysis, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 118-121 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3328169 . Accessed: 18/09/2014 19:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Oxford University Press and The Analysis Committee are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Analysis. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 181.193.19.161 on Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:47:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions II8 the discussion in Parfit 1984: 391 ff.) But I think it underlies Kahneman's and my intuitive response to the ethical question raised by Kahneman's research.1 University of St Andrews Fife KY16 9AL John. Broome@st-andrews.ac.uk References Kahneman, D. 1994. The cognitive psychology of consequences and moral intuition. Tanner Lecture on Human Values, University of Michigan. Publication forth- coming. Kahneman, D., B. L. Fredrickson, C. Schreiber, and D. A. Redelmeier. 1993. When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end. Psychological Science 4: 401-5. Narveson, J. 1967. Utilitarianism and new generations. Mind 76: 62-72. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1I am grateful to Douglas MacLean for an encouraging conversation we had about this paper, while walking in the Garden Quarter of New Orleans. MacLean tells me that my conclusions represent a male point of view. PETER KLEIN & TED A. WARFIELD No help for the coherentist PETER KLEIN & TED A. WARFIELD In 'What price coherence?' (1994) we argued that coherentism about epis- temic justification is incompatible with the existence of an intimate connection between epistemic justification and truth. Trenton Merricks has replied, claiming that our argument 'depends upon evaluating the truth conduciveness of a theory of justification at the system level - justification is truth conducive only if, according to [Klein and Warfield], the more justi- fied a set or system of beliefs is, the more likely it is that the set or system contains no false beliefs' (Merricks 1995: 306). Merricks goes on to claim that truth conduciveness should be evaluated at the level of particular beliefs, not at the level of systems of belief. He concludes that while we have shown that adding to the coherence of a set of beliefs often reduces the likelihood that the set contains only true members, this does not imply that coherence is not truth conducive when truth conducivity is evaluated at the level of individual beliefs. ANALYSIS 56.2, April 1996, pp. 118-121. ? Peter Klein and Ted A. Warfield This content downloaded from 181.193.19.161 on Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:47:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NO HELP FOR THE COHERENTIST II19 But this reply does not rescue the coherentist, nor does it even help the coherentist. Indeed, the reply loses sight of the fact that we were addressing coherentists. Merricks claims that we are committed to the view that whether or not a theory of justification is truth conducive must be evalu- ated at the level of systems of beliefs. His only evidence for this erroneous attribution is that we argue that coherentism is not truth conducive by showing that increasing the coherence of a set of beliefs often decreases the likelihood that the set contains only true members. Whether or not a given theory of epistemic justification is truth condu- cive depends on whether or not the justification of whatever the theory in question says is the bearer of justification is an indication of the truth of that bearer of justification. Thus, the way to examine this issue is to check and see if an increase in whatever the theory in question says justification is implies an increase in the likelihood of the truth of whatever the theory says the bearer of justification is. Because different theories of justification might disagree as to what items are the bearers of justification (for exam- ple, are they individual beliefs or sets of beliefs?) no sweeping generalizations about which 'level' such inquiry should occur are possible.1 In 'What price coherence?', we applied this thinking to the case of coher- entism. Coherence is clearly a property of sets of beliefs and not of individual beliefs. While definitions of coherence will vary, the essential claim is that coherence is a matter of logical/explanatory/epistemic 'fit' among beliefs. A set of beliefs is coherent just in case its member beliefs 'appropriately hang together' whatever precise characterization of that is given. Because coherence is a property of sets of beliefs, if coherentism about justification is correct and justification is truth conducive, then increasing the coherence of a set of beliefs should typically increase the likelihood of its truth (that is, the likelihood that it contains only true members). But, as we showed and as Merricks agrees we showed, increas- ing the coherence of a set of beliefs often decreases the likelihood that the set contains only true members. So, as we argued, if coherentism about epistemic justification is correct, then epistemic justification is not truth conducive (see also Sayre-McCord 1985). Merricks claims that because our 'argument against the coherentist turns on the fact that the more logically independent beliefs a system has, the less likely it is to contain only true beliefs' we 'are committed to the claim that if justification is truth conducive, then systems of belief cannot possibly 1 For the record, we both believe that justification is a property of individual beliefs. This, however, does not change the fact that whether or not a given theory of justifi- cation is truth conducive depends on whether or not there is an intimate connection between the justification of whatever the theory says is the bearer of justification and the truth of the alleged bearers of justification. This content downloaded from 181.193.19.161 on Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:47:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I 20 PETER KLEIN & TED A. WARFIELD become more justified as they grow (in logically independent beliefs)' (1995: 307). But that misses the point of our argument. We argued that if justifica- tion is both truth conducive and as coherentists characterize it (namely as coherence, a property of sets of beliefs) then systems of beliefs cannot possi- bly become more justified as they grow in logically independent beliefs. Contrast the plight of coherentists with the situation of typical founda- tionalists. Foundationalists can claim that individual, properly basic beliefs (beliefs that satisfy certain criteria and serve as the evidential basis for other beliefs) are justified and, consequently, very likely to be true - perhaps because of their causal aetiology - and that individual beliefs properly inferentially based on properly basic beliefs are justified and, consequently, likely to be true because the inferences are truth preserving. Thus, foundationalists can hold: (1) that as sets of justified beliefs increase in size the likelihood that the sets contain only true members diminishes, and (2) that justification as characterized by foundationalism is truth conducive because individual beliefs which satisfy foundationalists' cri- teria for justification are likely to be true. Merricks seems to think that a coherentist can cheerfully recognize that increasing the coherence of a system of beliefs often decreases the likeli- hood that the system contains only true members. He seems to think that a coherentist can accept this by claiming that truth conducivity should be evaluated at the level of individual beliefs. But one can claim this only if one thinks that the property that is justification is a property of individual beliefs and as we saw earlier, coherence is not such a property. One might think that a coherentist about justification can easily extend the notion of coherence so that it does apply straightforwardly to individual beliefs, thereby avoiding the evaluation of truth conducivity at the level of sets of beliefs.2 We would like to point out in closing that the natural way to try to do this is a clear failure. One might think that a coherentist can simply maintain that the bearers of justification are individual beliefs, but that coherentism about justifica- tion is also correct because an individual belief is justified just in case it is a member of a coherent belief set.3 This attempted extension of the notion 2 Merricks does not attempt to do this and perhaps he would not want to try to do so. We raise this issue because a common reaction to our argument has been to claim that coherentists can extend the notion of coherence to individual beliefs. 3 For this sort of coherentist account of justification to be truth conducive, increases in the coherence of a set of beliefs must be intimately connected with increases in the likelihood of truth of each particular member of the set, though not in the increased likelihood that the set itself contains only true members. The burden is on any coher- entist endorsing such a view to show that coherence understood as a property of individual beliefs is truth conducive. This content downloaded from 181.193.19.161 on Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:47:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NO HELP FOR THE COHERENTIST 12I of coherence to individual beliefs is a failure. The proposed account implies the absurdity that either every one of my beliefs is justified or none of them is justified. To see this, consider my total set of beliefs. If one of the members of that set is justified, then, according to the proposed account, my belief set is coherent and, consequently, all of my beliefs are justified because they are all members of a coherent belief set. But if one of my beliefs is not justified, then it is not, according to the proposed account, a member of a coherent set of beliefs and, consequently, none of my beliefs is justified. The coherentist might try to avoid this absurdity by constructing 'appro- priate' subsets of my beliefs and holding that a belief is justified just in case it is a member of an appropriately constructed coherent subset of my total set of beliefs. We grant that a proper subset of a set of incoherent beliefs can be coherent, but we see no principled way for these subsets to be constructed that appeals only to coherence. And were coherentists to appeal to some property other than coherence that such 'appropriate' subsets possess (e.g., proper basicality and/or proper relationships to prop- erly basic beliefs) they would have abandoned their coherentist account of justification. Thus, we continue to believe that if coherentism about epistemic justification is correct then epistemic justification is not truth conducive. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA klein@zodiac.rutgers.edu The University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA warfield.3@nd.edu References Klein, P. and T. A. Warfield. 1994. What price coherence? Analysis 54: 129-32. Merricks, T. 1995. On behalf of the coherentist. Analysis 55: 306-9. Sayre-McCord, G. 1985. Coherence and models for moral theorizing. Pacific Philo- sophical Quarterly 6: 170-90. This content downloaded from 181.193.19.161 on Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:47:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions