The Move towards Holism:
The tendency to move towards conventionalism means in effect
that the system of beliefs we come to accept is, at least in part, a construction
designed to satisfy certain goals or purposes. This leads to the view of
constructivism: different constructions may be possible in so far as different
goals may be equally rational to pursue. Thus the "world" we know when
we "accept" a system of beliefs as warranted is a "construction" which
must be both logically consistent and coherent as well as in conformity
with the empirical evidence (even though that evidence is of course relative
to the conceptual scheme in which it is stated). These conclusions led
epistemology away from the original pragmatist, realist, and positivist
viewpoints that beliefs got justified more or less individually in light
of the observational evidence for or against them (which was after all
a strong element in their reaction against idealism) and that knowledge
advanced in a piecemeal fashion of adding more and more warranted beliefs
to the pile of all knowledge. Instead, the combined effect of the linguistic
turn and the pragmatizing of epistemology to warranted belief has been
to see different candidates for the title of "knowledge" as not in individual
propositions or statements but rather as whole systems or "world-views"
relative to different conceptual schemes and different goals. In the words
of W.V.O.Quine, the pragmatizing of epistemology implies that our beliefs
"face the tribunal of experience as a corporate body" rather than individually.
This view is known as "holism." Much contemporary epistemology turns on
issues such as conventionalism, constructivism, and holism.