The Regress Argument
Both coherence and foundationalist theories of justification attempt to answer the regress argument, a fundamental problem in epistemology that goes as follows. Given some statement P, it appears reasonable to ask for a justification for P. If that justification takes the form of another statement, P', one can again reasonably ask for a justification for P', and so forth. There are three possible outcomes to this questioning process:
- the series is infinitely long, with every statement justified by some other statement.
- the series forms a loop, so that each statement is ultimately involved in its own justification.
- the series terminates with certain statements having to be self justifying.
An infinite series appears to offer little help, since it is basically impossible to check that each justification is satisfactory. Relying on such a series quickly leads to skepticism.
A loop begs the question. Coherentism is sometimes characterised as accepting that the series forms a loop, but although this would produce a form of coherentism, this is not what is generally meant by the term.
Read more about this topic: Coherentism
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