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Coherentism is the name given to a few philosophical theories in modern epistemology, the study of knowledge. There are two distinct types of coherentism. One is the coherence theory of truth; the other, the coherence theory of justification. The coherentist theory of justification characterizes epistemic justification as a property of a belief only if that belief is a member of a coherent set. What distinguishes coherentism from other theories of justification is that the set is the primary bearer of justification.〔Klein, P. D. (2007). Human Knowledge and the Infinite Progress of Reasoning. Philosophical Studies , 134 (1), 1-17.〕 As an epistemological theory, coherentism opposes foundationalism and infinitism and attempts to offer a solution to the regress argument. In this epistemological capacity, it is a theory about how belief can be justified. Coherentism is a view about the structure of justification or knowledge. The coherentist's thesis is normally formulated in terms of a denial of its contrary foundationalism. Coherentism thus claims, minimally, that not all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. This negative construal of coherentism occurs because of the prominence of the regress problem in the history of epistemology, and the long-held assumption that only foundationalism provides an adequate, non-skeptical solution to that problem. After responding to the regress problem by denying foundationalism, coherentists normally characterize their view positively by replacing the foundationalism metaphor of a building as a model for the structure of knowledge with different metaphors, such as the metaphor which models our knowledge on a ship at sea whose seaworthiness must be ensured by repairs to any part in need of it. Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationalists, with different varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific relationship among beliefs identified as coherence. ==Definition== As a theory of truth, coherentism restricts ''true'' sentences to those that cohere with some specified set of sentences. Someone's belief is true if and only if it is ''coherent'' with all or most of his or her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency. Statements that are comprehensive and meet the requirements of Occam's razor are usually to be preferred. As an illustration of the principle, if people lived in a virtual reality universe, they could see birds in the trees that aren't really there. Not only are the birds not really there, but the trees aren't really there either. The people ''know'' that the bird and the tree are there, because it coheres with the rest of their experiences in the virtual reality. Talking about ''coherence'' is an abstract way of talking about the things that the people really know, without regard for whether they are in a virtual reality or not. Perhaps the best-known objection to a coherence theory of truth is Bertrand Russell's. Russell maintained that since both a belief and its negation will, individually, cohere with at least one set of beliefs, this means that contradictory beliefs can be shown to be true according to coherence theory, and therefore that the theory cannot work. However, what most coherence theorists are concerned with is not all possible beliefs, but the set of beliefs that people actually hold. The main problem for a coherence theory of truth, then, is how to specify just this particular set, given that the truth of which beliefs are actually held can only be determined by means of coherence. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「coherentism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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