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Single Idea 8879

[filed under theme 13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / c. Coherentism critique ]

Full Idea

One's beliefs can be comprehensively coherent without amounting to knowledge.

Gist of Idea

Fully comprehensive beliefs may not be knowledge

Source

Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.6)

Book Ref

Bonjour,L/Sosa,E: 'Epistemic Justification' [Blackwells 2003], p.116


A Reaction

Beliefs that are fully foundational or reliably sourced may also fail to be knowledge. I take it that any epistemological theory must be fallibilist (Idea 6898). Rational coherentism will clearly be sensitive to error.

Related Idea

Idea 6898 Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner]


The 20 ideas from Ernest Sosa

Much propositional knowledge cannot be formulated, as in recognising a face [Sosa]
We can't attain a coherent system by lopping off any beliefs that won't fit [Sosa]
It is acceptable to say a supermarket door 'knows' someone is approaching [Sosa]
Fully comprehensive beliefs may not be knowledge [Sosa]
In reducing arithmetic to self-evident logic, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism [Sosa]
Most of our knowledge has insufficient sensory support [Sosa]
Perception may involve thin indexical concepts, or thicker perceptual concepts [Sosa]
Do beliefs only become foundationally justified if we fully attend to features of our experience? [Sosa]
The phenomenal concept of an eleven-dot pattern does not include the concept of eleven [Sosa]
Some features of a thought are known directly, but others must be inferred [Sosa]
Vision causes and justifies beliefs; but to some extent the cause is the justification [Sosa]
If mental states are not propositional, they are logically dumb, and cannot be foundations [Sosa]
There are very few really obvious truths, and not much can be proved from them [Sosa]
Mental states cannot be foundational if they are not immune to error [Sosa]
A single belief can trail two regresses, one terminating and one not [Sosa]
The negation of all my beliefs about my current headache would be fully coherent [Sosa]
What law would explain causation in the case of causing a table to come into existence? [Sosa]
Mereological essentialism says an entity must have exactly those parts [Sosa]
Where is the necessary causation in the three people being tall making everybody tall? [Sosa]
The necessitated is not always a result or consequence of the necessitator [Sosa]