^Because, according to coherentism, the only way for a belief to be justified is to be part of a set of coherent beliefs, the coherentist will certainly not endorse infallibility about the
beliefs we form about our mental states. However, at least for internalist coherentism, the transparency thesis is very important.
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 6 Problems with self-Knowledge
W hen we talk about internalist coherentism, the
“coherentism” part just refers to the fact that coherentists stress the importance of the coherence of your beliefs for your justification. Beliefs aren’t justified individually but are justified by being
members of sets of beliefs that cohere together, are useful in providing explanations and predictions, and are the simplest sets of beliefs that provide useful explanations and predictions.
The “internalist” part means two things.
v The bases for your justification are internal to your mind: They’re mental states of yours. In the case of coherentism, they’re beliefs.
v The ways you build up your justification are ways you can appreciate as contributing to your justification. In the case of coherentism, you can come to appreciate that you are justified, because you can, if you check, establish to your own satisfaction that your beliefs are in fact members of a coherent set of beliefs that is comparatively simple, explanatory, and useful for predictions.
If the coherentist is an internalist, then he or she thinks that to be justified you need to be able to check to see that your beliefs are part of a coherent set that is comparatively simple, explanatory, and useful for predictions. But that means that you need to have knowledge of what your beliefs are—you have to know what you believe.
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 6 Problems with self-Knowledge
^For any belief, if you believe it, then you know that you believe it—and this is just the transparency thesis applied to the case of beliefs. So, in order for coherence theory to work, the transparency thesis has to be true, at least in the case of beliefs.
^The coherentist wants us to survey our beliefs and see how they hang together.
The better they fit, the more justified they are. In some ways, then, the coherentist thinks that searching for justification is like trying to tell a good story. You’re looking for connections, trying to provide a picture that makes sense of all the component parts.
^Storytelling is an activity. It requires work on the part of the storyteller, looking for connections and drawing parallels. In contrast, the foundationalist doesn’t think that our foundational justification requires much work on our part. In fact, the traditional foundationalist has a name for this foundational justification that makes the believer seem like just a passive recipient of his or her justification: the given, which refers to the sensory experiences that are just given to us when we engage with the world through our senses.
^Because of this, the foundationalist doesn’t think that you need to survey your beliefs or other mental states in order to be justified in having those beliefs. When you’re justified on the basis of experience, that’s the most obvious thing in the world! Your sense
experience, in such cases, just hands you your justification.
^For an experience to be foundational, it must provide you with very strong evidence for some belief. The strongest evidence it could provide, the traditional foundationalist suggests, is for a belief that you’re having that sort of experience. And it’s that belief about your experience that justifies your belief.
^But how much justification does your experience provide you for the belief that you’re having that experience?
When you believe that you have a headache, for example, how justified are you?
^If the infallibility claim is true, then if you believe you have a certain experience, then you really do have that experience. Your justification, in other words, is infallible. This is the sort of certain justification that Descartes was after.
^Of course, the certainty stops for you at your beliefs about your experiences. Those are certain, but what isn’t certain is whatever you might infer from those beliefs.
^Regardless, however, what is certain is that the infallibility claim, at least with regard to our own phenomenal experiences, is of great significance for the traditional foundationalist.
It is our supposed infallibility about our own experiences that provides
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 6 Problems with self-Knowledge
the secure foundation on which the traditional foundationalist thinks we must build up the entire structure of our justification and knowledge.
^An additional mental phenomenon to which the foundationalist might say we must have infallible access is the relations between our mental states and the more foundational states that
support them. If you’re going to be an internalist foundationalist and suggest that all your knowledge is based on a foundation of experiences—and beliefs about those experiences—to which you have privileged access, then presumably you’ll also think that you have privileged access to the fact that your experiences support the beliefs about them.