Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:52:58.954Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coherence, Truth, and the Development of Scientific Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Paul Thagard
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What is the relation between coherence and truth? This paper rejects numerous answers to this question, including the following: truth is coherence; coherence is irrelevant to truth; coherence always leads to truth; coherence leads to probability, which leads to truth. I will argue that coherence of the right kind leads to at least approximate truth. The right kind is explanatory coherence, where explanation consists in describing mechanisms. We can judge that a scientific theory is progressively approximating the truth if it is increasing its explanatory coherence in two key respects: broadening by explaining more phenomena and deepening by investigating layers of mechanisms. I sketch an explanation of why deepening is a good epistemic strategy and discuss the prospect of deepening knowledge in the social sciences and everyday life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , pp. 28 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

For helpful suggestions, I am grateful to Josh Brown, Dave DeVidi, Eric Lormand, Elijah Millgram, Eric Olsson, Peter Railton, and anonymous referees.

References

Bechtel, W., and Abrahamsen, A. A. (2005), “Explanation: A Mechanistic Alternative,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 36:421–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, W., and Richardson, R. C. (1993), Discovering Complexity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Blanshard, B. (1939), The Nature of Thought, Vol. 2. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
BonJour, L. (1985), The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., and Kahneman, D., eds. (2002), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glennan, S. (1996), “Mechanisms and the Nature of Causation,” Erkenntnis 44:49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, A. (1999), Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gondhalekar, P. (2001), The Grip of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Laws of Motion and Gravitation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, G. (1986), Change in View: Principles of Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Henderson, D. K. (1994), “Epistemic Competence and Contextualist Epistemology: Why Contextualism Is Not Just the Poor Man’s Coherentism,” Journal of Philosophy 91:627–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (1982), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2001), “Real Realism: The Galilean Strategy,” Philosophical Review 110:151–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2002), “On the Explanatory Role of Correspondence Truth,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64:346–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuipers, T. (2000), From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1981), “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Philosophy of Science 48:19–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehrer, K. (1990), Theory of Knowledge. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Levin, M. (1984), “What Kind of Explanation Is Truth?” in Leplin, J. (ed.), Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 124–139.Google Scholar
Machamer, P., Darden, L., and Craver, C. F. (2000), “Thinking about Mechanisms,” Philosophy of Science 67:1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millgram, E. (2000), “Coherence: The Price of the Ticket,” Journal of Philosophy 97:82–93.Google Scholar
Newton-Smith, W. H. (1981), The Rationality of Science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsson, E. J. (2002), “What Is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?” Journal of Philosophy 99:246–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partington, J. (1961), A History of Chemistry. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Pearl, J. (1988), Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufman.Google Scholar
Psillos, S. (1999), Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks the Truth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1983), “There Is at Least One a Priori Truth,” in Putnam, H. (ed.), Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 98–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescher, N. (1973), The Coherence Theory of Truth. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shogenji, T. (1999), “Is Coherence Truth-Conducive?” Analysis 61:338–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smolin, L. (2001), Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Stanford, K. S. (2003), “Pyrrhic Victories for Scientific Realism,” Journal of Philosophy 100:553–573.Google Scholar
Thagard, P. (1988), Computational Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (1989), “Explanatory Coherence,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12:435–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (1992), Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (2000), Coherence in Thought and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (2003), “Pathways to Biomedical Discovery,” Philosophy of Science 70:235–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (2004), “Causal Inference in Legal Decision Making: Explanatory Coherence vs. Bayesian Networks,” Applied Artificial Intelligence 18:231–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. (n.d.), “Coherence: The Price Is Right,” http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/coh.price.html.Google Scholar
Whewell, W. (1968), William Whewell’s Theory of Scientific Method. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1998), Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vantage.Google Scholar
Young, J. O. (2001), “The Coherence Theory of Truth,” in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2001/entries/truth-coherence/.Google Scholar