There is a difference between having reasons for believing and believing for reasons. This difference is often fleshed out via an epistemic basing relation, where an epistemic basing relation obtains between beliefs and the actual reasons for which those beliefs are held. The precise nature of the basing relation is subject to much controversy, and one such underdeveloped issue is whether beliefs can be based on brain processing. In this paper I answer in the negative, providing reasons that the basing (...) relation must be a specific psychological level relation between mental states, rather than being a brain process. (shrink)

Garssen and van Laar in effect concede our main criticism of the pragma-dialectical approach. The criticism is that the conclusions of arguments can be ‘P-D reasonable’ yet patently unreasonable, epistemically speaking. The concession consists in the claim that the theory “remains restricted to the investigation of standpoints in the light of particular sets of starting points” which are “up to individual disputants to create” and the admission that all the relevant terms of normative appraisal have been redefined. We also discuss (...) their criticisms of the epistemic account of argumentation and argument evaluation and raise some new questions about the approach they defend. (shrink)

La noción de racionalidad constituye uno de los pilares fundamentales de las reflexiones sobre argumentación desarrolladas desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX hasta nuestros días. En este sentido, el presente trabajo articula, contrasta y evalúa la noción de racionalidad que postulan dos de las principales teorías actuales de la argumentación: la teoría epistémica y la teoría pragmadialéctica. En efecto, aunque ambas perspectivas reconocen en la idea de racionalidad uno de los criterios centrales de la calidad argumentativa, difieren en el (...) modo en el que la conceptualizan. Por este motivo, en el presente artículo, proponemos no sólo una lectura de ambas perspectivas sino también de las controversias que existen entre ellas, principalmente en torno a la noción de racionalidad. (shrink)

According to Lehrer’s defeasibility account of knowledge, we can understand knowledge as undefeated justified true belief. But this account faces many serious problems. One important problem is that from one’s subjective point of view, one can hardly bridge the gap between one’s personal justification and objective truth. Another important problem is that this account can hardly accommodate the externalist intuition that the epistemic status of a belief is not entirely determined by factors that are internal to the subject’s perspective. The (...) goal of this paper is to offer an alternative account of knowledge which can successfully deal with these problems. On the basis of a Sellarsian social practice theory of justification, I argue that we can understand knowledge as objectively justified belief. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the relation between various properties that have been regarded as important for determining whether or not a belief constitutes a piece of knowledge: its stability, strength and sensitivity to truth, as well as the strength of the epistemic position in which the subject is with respect to this belief. Attempts to explicate the relevant concepts more formally with the help of systems of spheres of possible worlds (à la Lewis and Grove) must take care to (...) keep apart the very different roles that systems of spheres can play. Nozicks sensitivity account turns out to be closer to the stability analysis of knowledge (versions of which I identify in Plato, Descartes, Klein and Lehrer) than one might have suspected. (shrink)