Coherentist contraction

A model of coherentist belief contraction is constructed. The outcome of be lief contraction is required to be one of the coherent subsets of the origi nal belief set, and a set of plausible properties is proposed for this set of coherent subsets. The contraction operators obtained in this way are sho wn to coincide with well-known belief base operations. This connection betw een coherentist and foundationalist approaches to belief change has importa nt implications for the philosophical interpretation of models of belief ch ange.