C.I. Lewis's Notion of Coherence and its Significance for Contemporary Epistemology

FAIN: FT-52940-04

Horacio Luis Arlo-Costa
Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3815)

According to the philosopher C.I. Lewis `A set of statements, will be said to be congruent (coherent) if and only if they are so related that the antecedent probability of any of them will be increased if the remainder of the set can be assumed as given premises.’ Is it possible to develop a measure of coherence along the lines sketched by Lewis? The idea of the project is to critically consider some of the recently proposed measures of coherence inspired by Lewis' insight, to propose an alternative account based on the use of a non-standard form of conditional probability, and to consider whether the resulting notion of coherence can be seen as truth-conducive.