Justification, Coherence and Quine

Abstract

Quine has influenced epistemology beyond his own project of naturalization. His early work influenced my own work in the coherence theory of knowledge,1 and I should like to take this occasion to raise some questions about coherence and knowledge. Quine was impressed by the failure of the reductionist program of phenomenalism. I agree with him about the failure of that program. I also agree with him that the consequence of that insight is that it is some system that confronts the world and our sensory experience of it. Knowledge, I concluded, must result from some combination of coherence and truth. I learned that from Quine but am less content to follow him down the path of naturalization. I want to explain why I took another path from his insights, a less revisionary one.