Basic Definition
Coherence is the degree of internal connectedness among the elements of a system: its assertions, categories, explanations, and conclusions not only avoid contradicting one another, but also mutually support, explain, and complement one another, forming a whole that can be maintained.
Coherence is not a property of an individual assertion but a property of a configuration of relations among assertions.
An assertion cannot be coherent by itself. It can only be coherent:
- with other assertions;
- within a particular system;
- relative to an established set of distinctions;
- under accepted rules governing permissible transitions from one assertion to another.
Consequently, the question “Is this coherent?” must always be supplemented by:
Coherent with what, within which system, under which initial distinctions, and according to which rules?
Coherence and Consistency
Coherence must not be reduced to logical consistency.
Consistency means a minimal condition: a system does not simultaneously contain the assertion A and its negation not-A, or does not permit both assertions to be derived.
Coherence requires more: the system’s elements must not merely be compatible, but connected through relations of mutual support, explanation, entailment, probabilistic confirmation, or dependence of meaning.
In contemporary epistemology, logical consistency is generally considered a necessary but insufficient condition of coherence. Several random assertions may not contradict one another while failing to form any connected system whatsoever.
For example:
- The Earth revolves around the Sun.
- Two plus two equals four.
- Tomorrow I will cook pasta.
These assertions may be compatible, but their collection does not thereby become a coherent theory. They lack a connection that would constitute a system.
Another important distinction follows:
Incoherence and the absence of coherence are not the same thing.
A system can be contradictory, in which case it is incoherent. But a collection of assertions may simply be disconnected: it is not coherent, yet it contains no conflict. For this reason, coherence and incoherence are sometimes treated in epistemology not as logical negations of one another, but as opposing states with a neutral domain between them.
The Structure of Coherence
Coherence emerges only after several preceding operations have been performed.
1. A Boundary of the System Has Been Drawn
First, it is determined which assertions, observations, and categories belong to the system and which remain outside it.
Without this boundary, coherence cannot be established because there is no definite set of elements whose relations are to be examined.
2. Elements Have Been Distinguished
Reality must be divided into distinguishable units:
- objects;
- events;
- properties;
- causes;
- subjects;
- categories;
- theses.
Until the elements have been distinguished, it is impossible to speak of how well they agree with one another.
3. Permissible Relations Have Been Established
It is necessary to determine what counts as a connection:
- logical entailment;
- causal dependence;
- explanation;
- semantic compatibility;
- statistical correlation;
- historical continuity;
- functional dependence.
Different rules of connection create different kinds of coherence.
4. Criteria of Admissibility Have Been Established
The system decides which moves are permitted within it and which are considered erroneous, meaningless, or irrelevant.
It is precisely here that the system acquires the capacity to defend its own form.
5. Exclusion Has Taken Place
To maintain coherence, part of reality may be:
- left unnoticed;
- declared an exception;
- redefined;
- pushed beyond the considered domain;
- deemed insignificant;
- translated into a language in which it ceases to contradict the system.
Therefore, coherence never testifies only to what the system has included. It also depends on what the system did not allow to enter in its original form.
Coherence as a Secondary Characteristic
Coherence does not precede the division of reality. It arises after the division.
First, the system determines:
- what exists;
- what counts as an element;
- which distinctions are significant;
- which relations are possible;
- what is accepted as evidence;
- what counts as a contradiction.
Only then is it possible to establish how well the resulting elements agree with one another.
Coherence is therefore not an immediate property of reality discovered without mediation. It is a characteristic of the order that has arisen within a distinction already made.
Short formula:
Coherence is internal order after division.
This does not imply that coherence is arbitrary or useless. It means something else: coherence is always local to the system of distinctions that made it possible.
Coherence Is Not Truth
A coherent system can be false.
One can construct a set of assertions in which each supports the others, while the entire system rests on a false initial assumption.
For example:
- I am a coffee cup.
- I am not a human being.
- I am inside a kitchen cupboard.
- I weigh two hundred grams.
These assertions can be combined into a consistent story, but their mutual support does not turn the initial thesis into truth. This kind of example is used in criticism of the coherence theory of truth: an obviously false assertion can be incorporated into a specially selected coherent set of assertions.
Coherence answers the question:
How well do the elements of a system hold one another together?
Truth requires a different question:
Does the system have an adequate relation to what exists independently of its internal structure?
In the coherence theory of truth, an assertion’s membership in a coherent system is declared to constitute its truth. In the correspondence theory, truth is understood through the relation of an assertion to facts or to how the world actually is. These are different operations: the former checks relations among beliefs, while the latter attempts to check the relation between a belief and the world.
Even contemporary proponents of epistemological coherentism generally distinguish coherence as a means of justifying beliefs from the claim that coherence itself creates truth.
Coherence Is Not Correspondence to Reality
A system may possess a flawless internal architecture while lacking adequate input from external reality.
This is called the isolation problem: if a system obtains justification solely through connections among its own beliefs, it remains unclear why it should accurately reflect the external world at all.
Imagine a perfectly functioning mechanism processing incorrect initial data.
All transitions within it will be correct:
- conclusions follow from premises;
- explanations are consistent;
- terms are used consistently;
- exceptions are correctly classified;
- contradictions are eliminated.
But if the initial data or the initial division is inadequate, the system will correctly reproduce its own error.
In such a case, coherence increases not truthfulness but the stability of error.
Coherence Is Not Completeness
A system may be coherent because it considers only a small fragment of reality.
The narrower the domain, the easier it is to ensure internal consistency.
One may exclude:
- historical context;
- subjective experience;
- unusual cases;
- unknown variables;
- alternative explanations;
- phenomena that do not fit the accepted classification.
The remaining model then becomes clean, connected, and predictable.
But its coherence may be a result not of depth but of reducing the field under consideration.
High coherence therefore does not imply high completeness.
Coherence Is Not Uniqueness
Several incompatible but internally coherent systems may exist.
Each of them:
- uses its own initial theses;
- divides what is observed in its own way;
- establishes its own causal connections;
- selects its own set of significant facts;
- explains deviations through its own conceptual apparatus.
The problem of alternative coherent systems is one of the classical objections to the idea that coherence by itself is sufficient for truth or justification. If two incompatible systems are equally coherent, coherence alone provides no criterion for choosing between them.
Consequently:
Coherence may show the stability of a particular form, but it does not prove that this particular form is the only possible or final one.
Closed Coherence
Closed coherence arises when a system itself determines:
- which data are admissible;
- how these data must be interpreted;
- what counts as confirmation;
- what counts as refutation;
- which language may be used to formulate an objection.
Afterward, every external event is translated into the system’s internal categories.
For example:
- agreement confirms the system;
- disagreement is declared misunderstanding;
- criticism is declared an emotional reaction;
- an exception is declared insignificant;
- absence of confirmation is explained by a hidden mechanism;
- contradictory experience is redefined as an error of perception.
Such a system can become increasingly coherent as it loses contact with what is not controlled by its rules.
This does not mean every coherent system is closed. Closure arises at the moment the system ceases to admit external grounds for revising its own foundations.
Production of Coherence
Coherence can not only be discovered but also produced.
Production Through Selection
Only elements that fit together well are selected from the overall collection.
Production Through Renaming
A contradictory element is given a new name, after which it no longer looks like a contradiction.
Production Through a Change of Scale
A phenomenon is considered at a level of abstraction where inconvenient distinctions disappear.
Production Through Retrospective Explanation
After an event, the system creates an explanation that makes the event appear expected within its model.
Production Through Circular Support
Thesis A is confirmed by thesis B, while thesis B is confirmed by thesis A. With enough intermediate links, the circle becomes less obvious and begins to be perceived as a complex network of independent confirmations.
Production Through Exclusion of the Language of Objection
The system requires criticism to be formulated exclusively in its own categories. But after being translated into those categories, the criticism can no longer question the categories themselves.
Manipulative Substitution
Manipulative use of coherence occurs when a characteristic of a system’s internal organization is transferred to its relation to reality.
The scheme of substitution:
- Our theses agree with one another.
- Therefore, our system is coherent.
- Therefore, our system is rational.
- Therefore, our system is true.
- Therefore, anyone who disagrees with the system is irrational.
Only the transition from the first point to the second is legitimate, and even that only after checking the quality of the connections.
All other transitions require additional grounds.
The substitution between the third and fourth points is especially important:
A system may be rationally organized relative to its own premises while simultaneously being inadequate to reality.
Corporate Coherence
A corporate system may define:
- loyalty as professionalism;
- disagreement as a lack of flexibility;
- resistance to a meaningless procedure as a communication problem;
- refusal of self-destruction as a lack of motivation;
- criticism of management as an inability to work in a team.
After that, every reaction of a person confirms the initial model.
If the person agrees, the system considers them adapted.
If they object, the system identifies a problem with adaptation.
If they leave, the system explains it as insufficient engagement.
If they burn out, the system talks about the need to develop resilience to stress.
The result is a coherent system in which every possible human behavior already has an internal explanation. But this coherence is achieved by excluding the question of the system itself from the permitted field of explanation.
Coherence and Reality
Applying the category of coherence directly to reality requires care.
The phrase “reality is coherent” assumes that the following have already been established:
- which elements reality consists of;
- which elements must be connected;
- what counts as a relation between them;
- which contradictions are actual;
- at what level of description agreement is evaluated.
But all these operations already belong to a model.
Consequently, an observed lack of coherence may indicate not that reality is contradictory, but that:
- the model drew the boundaries incorrectly;
- incompatible levels of description are being used simultaneously;
- the categories fail to cover what is observed;
- the system has lost significant variables;
- the phenomenon was initially divided incorrectly.
Reality is not obliged to be coherent relative to a form imposed upon it by an observer.
Sometimes the contradiction lies not in reality but between reality and the way reality was forced to fit into a system.
Deconstruction of Coherence
To deconstruct a claim about coherence, one must ask:
- What exactly is declared to be the system?
- Who drew its boundaries?
- Which elements were included and excluded?
- Which relations are considered significant?
- Which initial theses are not examined within the system?
- How does the system process refutations?
- Could an alternative coherent system exist?
- What could compel the system to change its own foundations?
- Is internal connectedness being presented as correspondence to reality?
- Is coherence the result of first eliminating everything that resists it?
Dictionary Formulation
Coherence is the relative internal connectedness of elements of a previously distinguished system, expressed in their consistency, mutual support, explanatory connectedness, and compatibility with the system’s established rules.
Coherence establishes the capacity of a system’s elements to hold together within a unified structure, but it does not itself establish:
- the truth of the initial theses;
- the adequacy of the division that was performed;
- the correspondence of the system to reality;
- the completeness of the system;
- the openness of the system to external refutation;
- the uniqueness of the system;
- the truth of its ontology.
Coherence is a local characteristic of form, not proof that the form coincides with reality.
Short Formula
Coherence shows how well a system holds together internally. It does not show whether reality supports it.
More strongly:
Coherence is the ability of a form not to collapse under its own elements. This does not establish the truth of that form.
And with respect to Viktor’s remark:
The connectedness of an axiomatic system proves only that the chosen theses can coexist according to the rules of the chosen system. It proves neither the truth of the axioms, nor the adequacy of the initial division, nor the correspondence of the system to reality.
