Coherence Accounts that Can’t Count: A Problem for Alexy, Peczenik, and Everyone Else (and a Note on Logical Relevance and Causation)

Je concept of coherence is aKractive but vague. In an aKempt to make it more precise, some, including Alexy and Peczenik, have proposed long lists of elaborate, formal criteria. However, their criteria can be trivially satisLed. Jis renders their formal apparatus idle; it has no part in generating any outcomes. Je most serious problem troubling all coherence accounts is known in philosophy of science as the tacking problem a. k. a. the problem of belief individuation. It undermines all coherence accounts that make maximising or minimising demands and thereby require counting elements (sentences, norms, cases, hypotheses etc.) or relations amongst them. Jis includes ‘constraint satisfaction’ theories of coherence such as Jagard’s and Amaya’s, but also those of Dworkin and MacCormick. I oMer a thorough critique, pars pro toto, of Alexy-Peczenik and a solution to the tacking problem in terms of relevant deduction. As a corollary, I recover from their account a notion of logical relevance that might have applications in the analysis of causation.