¶ … philosophers today. It is important to look at coherentism in epistemology and its isolation problem.
Epistemology
In Epistemology "an Internalist position which maintains that individual beliefs receive epistemic justification from their coherent relation to the larger set of beliefs of the cognizer. That is, if a belief is coherent with the rest of a cognizer's beliefs, or some coherent sub-set of beliefs, then it is epistemically justified as well (www.mc.maricopa.edu/~bfvaughan/test/lex/defs/coherentism.html)."
Isolation
A Coherentist may have a problem with isolation since there is "no obvious way in which a coherent system relates to anything that might exist outside of it. Therefore, it may be possible to construct a coherent theory of the world, which does not correspond to what actually occurs in the world (www.xasa.com.es/wiki/en/wikipedia/c/co/coherentism.html)." A Coherentist may be able to create a completely coherent system which is completely false, resulting in isolation.
Coherentists have a different viewpoint about "the phrase 'correspond to reality'. For a Coherentist, reality is exactly the entire coherent system and it is simply not possible for a coherent theory not to correspond to reality, if reality is the very same thing as the entire coherent system (www.xasa.com.es/wiki/en/wikipedia/c/co/coherentism.html)." A Coherentist may argue with critics that "any substantial system that was not true would by definition contain some contradictions, and so be incoherent (www.xasa.com.es/wiki/en/wikipedia/c/co/coherentism.html)."
Conclusion
Coherentist have a different viewpoint about reality and therefore are many times isolated from others. Espistemically, they justify this with their beliefs about coherent relationships.
Works Cited
(Coherentism. (accessed 23 November, 2004).
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(Coherentism. (accessed 23 November, 2004).
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