CONCEPT
Coherentism and Its Temptations
The epistemological position that beliefs are justified by mutual support alone—a web with no foundation—whose fatal vulnerability (coherent systems can be entirely false) AI exploits by producing perfect coherence without grounding.
Coherentism holds that beliefs are justified not by connection to foundational bedrock but by their coherence with the total web of beliefs. No belief is basic; every belief derives justification from its relationships to others. The metaphor is a web that holds itself up through mutual support. W.V.O. Quine's holism is the canonical version: the unit of empirical significance is not the individual statement but the totality of science. When experience conflicts with the web, any belief can be revised—the choice is pragmatic (simplicity, conservatism, explanatory power), not dictated by logic. The appeal is elegance and honesty—coherentism acknowledges that knowledge is social, historical, evolving, not a building erected once on secure foundations. The fatal vulnerability: a perfectly coherent system can be perfectly false. A novel coheres. So does a conspiracy theory. Coherence is a real epistemic virtue—but insufficient.
Haack diagnosed this in the 1990s. AI demonstrates it at scale in the 2020s, producing outputs that are internally consistent, mutually reinforcing, contextually appropriate—and ungrounded.