Coherence Without Certainty

Definition

Coherence without certainty is the epistemic posture of holding a set of beliefs as functionally coherent and provisionally adequate to the demands of living and inquiring, without claiming demonstrative certainty for any of them. The position presupposes that the historical philosophical demand for certainty (Descartes's project of indubitable foundations being the modern paradigm) has not succeeded, that pure skepticism is unlivable, and that what remains as an intellectually serious option is the cultivated holding of a coherent body of beliefs that the inquirer recognizes as revisable in principle while continuing to act on it in practice.

The position is associated with the pragmatist tradition (especially William James, John Dewey, and the contemporary work of Cheryl Misak and Hilary Putnam) and with the contemporary fallibilist strand in analytic epistemology.

The problem it answers

What is the right posture toward one's own beliefs, given that the historical demand for certainty has not succeeded? Descartes had attempted to ground all knowledge in indubitable foundations and had ended up with only the cogito as the unshakeable starting point. Hume had pushed empiricist commitments to their corrosive conclusions and arrived at skepticism about causation, the self, and the rational basis of induction. Twentieth-century epistemology in the analytic tradition has abandoned the foundationalist project; the contemporary literature on the Gettier problem, on contextualism, and on virtue epistemology operates within a generally fallibilist framework.

Meanwhile, in practice, the inquirer must act. One cannot suspend judgment on whether to eat, whether to trust one's senses, whether to engage with other people; the practical demands of living require beliefs adequate to the demands, even if the beliefs cannot be certified as certain. Coherence without certainty names the posture that takes both the theoretical recognition of fallibility and the practical demand for adequate beliefs seriously.

The core thesis

The core thesis has four parts.

Certainty is the wrong standard. The historical demand for certainty has not been met by any actual body of beliefs outside very limited mathematical and logical domains. Treating certainty as the standard against which all beliefs are measured produces either dogmatism (claiming certainty one does not have) or skeptical paralysis (refusing to act because certainty is unavailable).

Coherence is achievable. A body of beliefs can hang together internally, be mutually reinforcing, fit with the requirements of practical engagement, and be supported by the available evidence — without any individual belief in the body being certain. The standard is fit, not foundation.

Coherence is provisional. The believer holds the coherent body as adequate for present purposes while recognizing in principle that any element might require revision in light of new evidence, new argument, or new circumstances. The holding is not tentative in the sense of weak conviction; it is provisional in the sense of remaining open to the kind of evidence that would warrant revision.

The posture is sustainable. Many philosophers have argued (Hume in his famous concession, the pragmatists, Wittgenstein in On Certainty) that the posture of coherence without certainty is not just intellectually defensible but is the actual mode in which humans live and inquire. The dogmatist who claims certainty is typically holding beliefs in this mode without admitting it; the skeptic who refuses to act is performing a posture that cannot be sustained in actual life.

The pragmatist articulation

The pragmatist tradition gives the position its most extended articulation. William James in Pragmatism (1907) treats truth as what works in the long run — a formulation that locates truth in the dynamic relation between belief and experience rather than in correspondence to a fixed reality. John Dewey replaces truth with warranted assertibility — the property of beliefs that have survived disciplined inquiry. Both treatments take coherence and adequacy as the standards, with the recognition that any specific belief might be revised on further inquiry built into the framework.

The Peircean strand of pragmatism gives a more robust account in which inquiry would, at the ideal limit, converge on truth — a position that preserves a normative pull toward truth while granting that finite inquirers operate without the certification that they have arrived at it. The contemporary scholarly recovery of Peirce (Cheryl Misak especially) has emphasized this more rigorous version against the looser Jamesian formulations.

The Quinean and contemporary articulation

W.V.O. Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951) and Word and Object (1960) produced the most influential twentieth-century articulation of a position close to coherence without certainty. Quine's image of beliefs as a web whose individual strands can be revised in light of recalcitrant experience but whose overall coherence is what makes any individual belief serviceable, is one of the canonical articulations. The position is fallibilist (any belief may need revision), holist (revision typically requires adjustments elsewhere in the web), and pragmatic (the goal is a serviceable body of belief, not a body of indubitable foundations).

Contemporary epistemology has absorbed the Quinean framework. The literature on coherentism in epistemology (Laurence BonJour's earlier work, the contemporary engagement by Erik Olsson and others) develops it formally; the literature on contextualism (Keith DeRose, Stewart Cohen) develops it in different directions; the literature on virtue epistemology (Linda Zagzebski, John Greco) treats the agent's capacity to sustain coherence-without-certainty as itself an intellectual virtue.

Common confusions

Coherence without certainty is not skepticism. The skeptic suspends judgment; the coherentist judges, but holds the judgment provisionally. The two postures are sharply distinct in practice even if they share recognition that certainty is unavailable.

Coherence without certainty is not relativism. The coherentist may grant that different agents in different circumstances will arrive at differently coherent bodies of belief without granting that all such bodies are equally good. Some constructions are more coherent, more responsive to evidence, more serviceable than others; the standards of judgment are not absent.

Coherence without certainty is not weak conviction. The provisional holding can be very firm in practice. A scientist who knows that the current best theory might be revised in fifty years is not thereby uncertain about whether to use it now; the firmness of operational holding and the openness to revision in principle are perfectly compatible.

Coherence without certainty is not the same as eclecticism. Eclecticism (the assembly of disparate beliefs without concern for their mutual fit) is precisely what coherence rules out. The position demands that the body of beliefs hang together; what it does not demand is that any of them be certain.

Contemporary engagement

The position is engaged across multiple lines. Pragmatist epistemology through Cheryl Misak, Hilary Putnam, and Susan Haack. Analytic epistemology through the literature on fallibilism, coherentism, and contextualism. Philosophy of science through the work on theory revision, paradigm change, and the rationality of scientific inquiry. Philosophy as a way of life through Pierre Hadot, the contemporary stoicism revival, and the broader literature on philosophical practice as opposed to philosophical doctrine. Religious epistemology through the post-Wittgensteinian literature on religious belief that does not claim demonstrative certainty (William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Wainwright). The Bayesian tradition in formal epistemology provides a quantitative framework for thinking about belief as graded confidence rather than binary commitment, which is closely allied with coherence without certainty as a qualitative posture.

Further reading

• Belief Systems — the Pillar concept this satellites
• William James — the most extensive pragmatist articulation
• Pragmatism — the tradition the position is most associated with
• Hume — the canonical skeptical predecessor whose challenges the position inherits
• Identity Reconstruction — the related rebuilding of the self that the posture often supports
• Aporia — the productive perplexity the posture transforms into ongoing inquiry

Satellite of Belief Systems. The epistemic posture of holding beliefs as coherent and provisionally adequate without claiming certainty.