TY  - JOUR
AB  - This paper formally explores the common ground between mild versions of epistemological coherentism and infinitism; it proposes-and argues for-a hybrid, coherentist-infinitist account of epistemic justification. First, the epistemological regress argument and its relation to the classical taxonomy regarding epistemic justification-of foundationalism, infinitism and coherentism-is reviewed. We then recall recent results proving that an influential argument against infinite regresses of justification, which alleges their incoherence on account of probabilistic inconsistency, cannot be maintained. Furthermore, we prove that the Principle of Inferential Justification has rather unwelcome consequences-formally resembling the Sorites paradox-as soon as it is iterated and combined with a natural Bayesian perspective on probabilistic inferences. We conclude that strong versions of foundationalism and infinitism should be abandoned. Positively, we provide a rough sketch for a graded formal coherence notion, according to which infinite regresses of epistemic justification will often have more than a minimal degree of coherence.
DA  - 2014
DO  - 10.1007/s11229-013-0273-5
KW  - Principle of Inferential
KW  - Foundationalism (epistemology)
KW  - (epistemology)
KW  - Infinitism
KW  - Epistemic justification
KW  - Coherentism (epistemology)
KW  - Justification
KW  - Coherence
LA  - eng
IS  - 4
M2  - 701
PY  - 2014
SN  - 0039-7857
SP  - 701-723
T2  - Synthese
TI  - The dialectics of infinitism and coherentism. Inferential justification versus holism and coherence
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-26692190
Y2  - 2024-12-25T18:08:40
ER  -