Over the course of its history, cognitive science has often assumed that the important question regarding reality was its independence of an observer. Within this framework, epistemology becomes paramount as scientists work to discover the lawful connections between observer-independent reality and observers. Implicit, if not explicit, in this approach to cognitive science is the assumption that “truth” is to be measured in terms of the degree of discrepancy between observer-independent reality and whatever impressions, thoughts, representations, affordances, and other observer-dependent phenomena observers use to overcome this assumed epistemic gap.
In contrast to such correspondence-driven approaches to reality and truth, many coherence-driving philosophers of the late 1800s and early 1900s rejected correspondence as a starting point for ontology because they believed the subject-object divide it engendered ultimately made it difficult to defend the reality of the subjective (Gardner 2007; Hegel 1971; Priest 1991; Tseng 2003). Given their commitment to the reality of phenomena such as consciousness, value, and meaning, coherence theorists refused to accept the ontological risks inherent in correspondence approaches to reality. Instead, they proposed an alterative approach that admits the reality of consciousness, value, and meaning and assesses truth in terms of the degree of coherence (i.e., non-contradiction) (Oakeshott 1933; Tseng 2003).
In what follows, we flesh out the differences between coherence- and correspondence-driven approaches to reality, propose an explanation of why cognitive science came to favor the correspondence approach, describe problems that have arisen in cognitive science because of its commitment to correspondence theorizing, and propose an alternative framework (i.e., Wild Systems Theory—WST) which is inspired by a coherence approach to reality yet is entirely consistent with science.