Can we Grasp Consistency?

Abstract

In this paper, I will scrutinize a family of arguments which are supposed to show that consistency is not accessible in an epistemically relevant sense. If these arguments were sound, then consistency would be on a par with external facts: neither are directly accessible to us. External factors are not directly accessible because they need to be mediated in some way. Consistency would be inaccessible, according to these arguments, because proving or determining consistency in the relevant cases exceeds our intellectual capabilities. Thus, if consistency were actually inaccessible, then consistency could hardly play a role in an internalist account of epistemology. Traditionally (for instance, in Schlick’s account (1934)), however, consistency has been seen as a main ingredient of coherence. Modern epistemologists, like BonJour (1985), have also used consistency as a criterion of coherence, and they have even used consistency in order to define coherence.