Koherencja drogowskazem prawdy? Spójność jako źródło błędnych reprezentacji
Is coherence a guide to truth? Coherence and false representations

Commentary on the book by Krystyna Bielecka, "Błądzę, więc myślę. Co to jest błędna reprezentacja?"

Summary/Abstract: This paper is a commentary on Krystyna Bielecka’s book “I err, therefore I think. What is misrepresentation?”. I build on Bielecka’s coherentist account of detectable representational error in order to draw a wider picture of the role of coherence in evaluating representations. In particular, I explore the idea that the strive to maximize coherence is a major factor guiding the acquisition and revision of internal representations, whose role extends beyond error detection. The idea critically discussed in the paper is that coherence owes this role to its being truth-conductive, i.e. to the (alleged) fact that coherence tends to increase the truth-ratio of representations. I draw from historical and recent work in cognitive science to discuss a number cases where coherence maximization systematically produces misrepresentations. I argue that despite the appearances, these cases do not constitute proper counterexamples to the idea that coherence is, all else being equal, a guide to truth.

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