Pragmatic justifications, realism and truth: How does the suggestion to justify coherent belief systems pragmatically relate to Brümmer’s views?

Abstract

It is a privilege to have been invited to contribute to analysing Vincent Brümmer’s impressive oeuvre at the occasion of his 80th birthday. Being the successor on his chair in the philosophy of religion at Utrecht University, I will focus on philosophical aspects of his work. In particular, I will zoom in on his considerations on truth. After providing an overview of Brümmer’s critique of coherentist and pragmatist definitions of truth (see section 1), I will make a suggestion on how coherentist and pragmatic criteria can be used alternatively (see section 2). The upshot will be an account of pragmatic justification. In section 3, I flesh out the consequences of this account for the issues of realism and truth. In section 4, I investigate how this account relates to Brümmer’s views on the issues.