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.