And thanks,
Kyle
10 hours down, 110 more to go
My thoughts so far on coherentism.
It seems that from what I have read so far coherentism will ultimately be an untenable position. From the people I have read so far holding to an entirely coherentist account of justification is impossible or highly improbable because it can't adequately deal with Empirical, sensory experiences and evidence. But it also seems to be a huge problem accommodating for how sensory experience can justify propositional beliefs, making it difficult to see how a foundationalist account of experientialism can adequately be based on these experiences. Maybe some sort of cognitive faculty needs to be appealed to in order to makes such a leap. Something that takes in empirical experiences and somehow turns them into propositional phrases to be believed or not.
I would like to know if anyone has written much on this idea.
I also wonder if this really is how it works. I wonder if I really take in my perceptions and somehow come to believe propositions out of and about them. It seems strange to have perceptions causing beliefs about propositions or sentences. But it doesn't seem that strange to say that my perceptions lend some justification to any propositional beliefs that I may have. Experience and memory seem to be very non-propositionally based. I may 'think' using words and language, but I don't experience these things in words or language, unless reading or listening to someone talk. And even then its just sound or color/shapes that I have recognition of. It does seem that to formulate a propositional belief in my mind I have to apply some sort of linguistic mental faculty that sorts through my concepts and applies them to the sense-data that I have received. Thus, proposition-izing my sense experience and making it possible for me to talk about it/make and hold beliefs about it. It seems that this process is a very complicated one that the depth which of goes far beyond coherentism and foundationalism and delves into how language and real objects relate, as well as how I know what an object is propositionally/conceptually.
It seems to me maybe that cognitive processes sorting through sensory experience are much more complicated than their propositional counterparts. I feel that having sensations, memories of sensations and beliefs about them are much more complex than the simple propositional ascriptions of these beliefs and sensations. Maybe the only way we can communicate about these things is though language, but internally I see so much more involved in my pool of sense-data and belief structures than propositional logical inferences. (Such as the steady flow of experiences I have, the sheer amount of data taken in but not conceptualized or proposition-ized, etc.)
If anyone has any insight into this or suggestions on what might be helpful for me to read, I would much appreciate them.
