The philosophical puzzle of incoherence

[Celerity]

What is incoherence?

We can all be inconsistent. Philosophy illuminates a bigger puzzle: how do we hold contradictory beliefs at the same time?

https://aeon.co/essays/is-it-possible-to-hold-truly-contradictory-beliefs-together





I hate going to the mall. When I visit, I’m filled with a sense of existential dread. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of products, left with a sense that I should buy either all of them or none of them – somehow, it seems that there is no practicable way to select just one or two. A few years ago, I decided: enough. I formed the intention never to visit the mall again. From then on, it was to be only online ordering for me – never mind the number of returns I’d have to make when it turned out that I’d guessed wrong again about whether to order a sweater in a medium or a large.

Soon afterward, I was invited to a wedding. After that early-thirties phase when it seemed like all my partner and I did on the weekends was attend weddings, the stream of invites had dried up somewhat, and I was excited to have a chance to leave our kid with the grandparents, drink one too many glasses of Prosecco, and hit the dancefloor when those first few bars of ‘Hey Ya!’ inevitably sounded. Thinking of that dancefloor, my mind turned to my lone pair of battered old dress shoes. The left shoe had a weird stain on top, subtle enough to be unapparent to a casual observer, but noticeable enough to bother me whenever I looked down. It was time for a new pair, and I formed the intention to buy some for the wedding. Time passed, and something else always seemed more pressing, until suddenly it was the day of our flight, and I realised something with horror: it was too late for an online order. If I was going to get the shoes, I was going to have to go to the mall.

At that moment, I was in an uncomfortable position. I intended – or had intended, until then – to buy a new pair of shoes. And I believed that the only way to buy them was to visit the mall. But I also intended – or had intended, until then – never to visit the mall again. Something had to give. I needed to either give up my intention to buy a new pair of shoes, or give up my intention never to visit the mall again (unless I could think of some way to get the shoes without visiting the mall after all). My mind immediately turned to deciding which was the lesser of the two evils: going without new shoes, or paying a visit to the dreaded mall. There’s nothing very remarkable about the story I just told. But now suppose that my reaction to my realisation had been different. Suppose I’d said to my partner: ‘I acknowledge that, to get the shoes, I must go to the mall. And I do intend to get the shoes. But I have no intention whatsoever to go to the mall.’



If I said this, and if it really were a sincere, accurate report of my state of mind – more on that later – there would be something deeply wrong with me. The mental states I’ve just reported, to put it mildly, do not sit well together. The combination is incoherent. Philosophers call the kind of incoherence that’s involved in these states means-end incoherence – I intend an end (getting new shoes), believe that a means (going to the mall) is necessary for that end, but do not intend the means. There are many other kinds of incoherence. For example, it’s incoherent to have ‘cyclical’ preferences – say, to prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, prefer vanilla to strawberry, but prefer strawberry to chocolate. And it’s incoherent to have beliefs that are straightforwardly logically inconsistent – say, to believe that great cooks never overcook eggs, believe that you are a great cook, but also believe that you have overcooked the eggs.

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