Beyond Coherentism
摘要
I argue that Lehrer’s account of personal justification does not match what we normally mean when we say that a person has a justified belief. It’s too subjective. According to Lehrer’s account of justification, a person could be justified in believing in astrology or that the earth was created a thousand years ago. His account of knowledge suffers from a similar defect. According to it, a person could know that someone in his office owns a Ferrari based on misleading evidence offered by another person in his office who is trying to trick him. Finally, I argue that Lehrer is really a closet foundationalist, not a coherentist, because his theory of knowledge is driven by an attempt to explain our intuitive judgments in a few key examples for which he is justifiably famous. We must go beyond coherentism to find an adequate theory of justification and knowledge.