ABSTRACT
Coherentism is the third nonskeptical reaction to the skeptic's regress argument. The other two — foundationalism and contextualism — construct hierarchies. A coherent system of beliefs is a set of beliefs, but not just any such set. It contains only beliefs that support each other and thereby justify each other. They stand in relations of mutual support and justification. The coherence of a system of beliefs is participated in equally by all of the beliefs in the set. It is they that cohere; so it is they that are justified. This concept of coherence gives coherentists their distinctive reaction to the regress argument. Coherentism aims to account for justification purely in terms of what is internal to a system of belief. Coherentism tries to account for justification wholly in terms of what obtains inside a system of belief; the justification is not supposed to depend on anything outside the system.
