DeVliegendeHollander comments on Request for Steelman: Non-correspondence concepts of truth - Less Wrong

13 Post author: PeerGynt 24 March 2015 03:11AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 25 March 2015 08:10:43AM 1 point [-]

As far as I can tell, most coherentists want to match theories with reality too, because truth doesn't really have any other useful definition. The goal is not to be coherent within a random and reality-detached set of sentences: the goal is to be coherent with the whole of science. When a scientists rejects (assigns very low probability to) the observation of a perpetuum mobile on the basis that it contradicts the laws of physics, that is a standard coherentist move. This is another one. The goal is to avoid having to waste time and costs on non-fruitful data gathering. Ultimately the only thing that is rejected is that blind data-only approach that may be considered the straw-manning of the correspondenceist position, except that one is actually unfortunately used too much. A coherentist will simply not spend money buying an airplane ticket to check if someone's garage has a dragon, the proposition contradicts so much we already know that the very low prior probability does not worth the cost. You may as well call this a wiser version of correspondencism, the barriers are not exactly black and white here. This is unfortunately philosophy, so fairly muddy :)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 March 2015 09:45:13AM 1 point [-]

You've got coherentism confused with holism.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 March 2015 10:35:30AM 0 points [-]

Is holism even a thing?

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 March 2015 11:20:29AM 1 point [-]

Yes. So is Google.

You can have holism without coherence where you require that the whole of science is true by correspondence, but the parts aren't.. Inasmuch as it is correspondence, it isnt coherence.