融贯是否传递真

Does Coherence Conduct Truth?

人们可能对融贯的概念和标准没有多少的了解,但却凭直觉确信融贯是真的一个必要条件。支持这种信念的基础是:一个信息系统越是融贯,就越有可能是真的,即融贯传递真。而这正是融贯论的核心问题。然而,当存在说谎、虚构、合作共谋等不利情况时,信息系统将完全是虚假的,此时信息系统的融贯传递的只是真的假象。应对这种困难的一个策略是,对信息的输入施加两个限制条件——信息源独立并且具有部分可靠性。但是,由于测量融贯度的尝试未能取得成功,无法从数学上证明:当信息系统S_1比S_2更为融贯时,S_1为真的概率要比S_2的高。因此,"融贯传递真"的论断对怀疑主义的挑战是开放的。

People may know little about the concept and standards of coherence, but according to intuition they believe that coherence is a necessary condition of truth. The underlining belief is that the more coherent an information system is, the more probable it is to become true. That is the central issue of coherence theory. However, with existing unfavorable conditions, such as lying, forging and colluding, we can not exclude the possibility that the information system is totally a fiction, and in this case coherence may only conduct the false imagination of truth. An effectively strategy to cope with this kind of problems is to add two limiting conditions： that the information source is independent and at least has partial reliability. But it still does not solve the problem perfectly, because it fails to prove that if system S_1 is more coherent than S_2,then the probability of truth of S_1 is higher than S_2.As a result, the assertion that ＂coherence conducts truth＂ is open to skepticism.