This paper develops a pragmatic and naturalistic account of objectivity by re-engineering Quine’s “web of belief” into a dynamic, learning system. We argue that inquiry is best understood not as a search for ultimate foundations but as a project of epistemic engineering: the construction of more resilient, less brittle public knowledge structures. To assess resilience, we introduce the Systemic Brittleness Index (SBI)—a diagnostic tool that measures the long-term viability of conceptual networks based on the real-world costs they generate when tested against the pragmatic pushback of reality.
Networks learn through a mechanism we call the Functional Transformation, in which highly validated propositions are “promoted” into core predicates, upgrading the system’s architecture. This failure-driven metabolism grounds a novel form of Systemic Externalism, explaining how fallible, local maps converge on a real, mind-independent landscape of viable solutions—the Apex Network.
The result is a synthesized, three-level theory of truth (Contextual, Justified, and Objective) that resolves the isolation objection to coherentism and situates objectivity within a naturalistic framework of resilience and brittleness reduction. This epistemological model, developed here in general, provides the foundation for further applications—including a companion paper on moral objectivity—which extend the same engineering logic into the domain of metaethics.
W.V.O. Quine’s demolition of the “two dogmas of empiricism” replaced the pyramid of foundations with the web of belief—a holistic structure in which revision radiates inward from the periphery to protect the core. Yet Quine’s image is static. It captures a momentary structure of justification but not the cumulative dynamics of learning: how local webs interact, merge into public knowledge, and progressively lock in resilience.
This paper provides what Quine’s model lacked: a metabolism for the web. We reconceive inquiry as a form of epistemic engineering, in which networks of public predicates are continually stress-tested by the pragmatic pushback of reality. Some networks prove brittle, generating compounding costs and eventually collapsing; others adapt, reducing fragility and stabilizing into resilient architectures.
Our goal is to identify the diagnostic tools and causal mechanisms that explain this process. We introduce the Systemic Brittleness Index (SBI) to measure fragility, and the Functional Transformation to explain how successful propositions are institutionalized as durable predicates. These mechanisms, we argue, provide the missing link between fallible inquiry and objective truth.
The payoff is twofold. First, we develop a synthesized, three-level account of objectivity—contextual, justified, and objective—that integrates coherentism with externalist realism. Second, we outline a falsifiable research program: brittleness can be operationalized through historical and contemporary indicators such as coercion ratios, patch velocity, and epistemic debt.
The argument proceeds as follows. Section 2 introduces the diagnostic toolkit for brittleness. Section 3 identifies the pragmatic imperative grounding inquiry. Section 4 constructs the architecture of objectivity and the Apex Network. Section 5 explains the Functional Transformation as the engine of learning. Section 6 situates the model against rivals in epistemology and pragmatism. Section 7 defends it against objections and sketches the empirical research program it enables. A companion paper applies this framework to moral objectivity, showing how the same systemic logic illuminates the is/ought problem and the dynamics of moral progress.