Intuition and Coherence in the Keystone Loop

Abstract

Is knowledge and justification a matter of isolated intuition or coherence with a background system? One intuitionist, Thomas Reid, failed to acknowledge the controversy. He argued that knowledge was a matter of first principles, which drive intuition, but also claimed that the first principles depended on each other like links in a chain, as a coherentist might. Wilfrid Sellars, a famous coherentist, argued that all knowledge was explained by coherence with a background system, but, on the other hand, conceded that some knowledge claims were justified noninferentially, as an intuitionist might. This book suggests a resolution to the conflict in terms of a kind of knowledge requiring the knower be able to defend the target knowledge claim. The defense rests on exemplar representation of experience, yielding intuition, tied together in a keystone loop within a system to defend that representation, yielding coherence.