Prospects For Peircean Epistemic Infinitism

Epistemic infinitism is the view that infinite series of inferential relations are productive of epistemic justification. Peirce is explicitly infinitist in his early work, namely his 1868 series of articles. Further, Peirce's semiotic categories of firsts, seconds, and thirds favors a mixed theory of justification. The conclusion is that Peirce was an infinitist, and particularly, what I will term an impure infinitist. However, the prospects for Peirce's infinitism depend entirely on the prospects for Peirce's early semantics, which are not good. Peirce himself revised the semantic theory later, and in so doing, it seems also his epistemic infinitism

A Self-Defeat Problem for the Rhetorical Theory of Argument

The rhetorical theory of argument, if held as the conclusion of an argument, is self-defeating. There are two arguments that it is. First is the quick and dirty argument: the rhetorical theory is that argument quality is adjudged by eliciting conviction, but the case for the theory is not convincing. Second is the process argument: if one has the view that one’s reasons are arranged with the sole purpose of eliciting assent, one does not view one’s resultant commitments as reflective of truth

The Ad Hominem argument against \u27Knowledge is true belief\u27: a reply to Martens

In this article I will detail the short-comings that exist in the cognitive account of the emotion objectless fear, principally, though not exclusively, as it is presented in the work of William Lyons. I will use my critique of Lyons’s causal-evaluative theory to act as a point of transition or pathway towards Heidegger’s description of Angst as it is detailed in Being and Time. I argue that objectless fear cannot simply be dismissed as a mislabelled mood, as claimed by Martha Nussbaum or, as Lyons suggests, that its object is merely vague or imponderable. Rather, it is my contention that genuine objectless fear (or Angst) is best understood as an ontologically important means of revealing our authentic and inauthentic possibilities

‘Knowledge is true belief’ rebutted

Crispin Sartwell has argued that knowledge is merely true belief. The two arguments for this thesis are (1) from counter-examples to third requirements for knowledge and (2) from a dilemma for justification-theorists. I will show that the purported counter-examples are inconclusive because they do not reflect an informal pragmatic element of knowledge-attribution. The dilemma is inconclusive, because one horn is easily graspable. Further, I will refine Lycan’s argument that the thesis that knowledge is true belief is inconsistent with epistemic modesty

Commentary on: Robert Pinto\u27s Truth and the virtue of arguments

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A (Modest) Defense of Fallacy Theory

Fallacy theory has three significant challenges to it: the generality, scope, and negativity problems. To the generality problem, the connection between general types of bad arguments and tokens is a matter of refining the use of the vocabulary. To the scope problem, the breadth of fallacy’s instances is cause for development. To the negativity problem, fallacy theory must be coordinated with a program of adversariality-managemen

‘Knowledge is true belief’ rebutted

Crispin Sartwell has argued that knowledge is merely true belief. The two arguments for this thesis are (1) from counter-examples to third requirements for knowledge and (2) from a dilemma for justification-theorists. I will show that the purported counter-examples are inconclusive because they do not reflect an informal pragmatic element of knowledge-attribution. The dilemma is inconclusive, because one horn is easily graspable. Further, I will refine Lycan’s argument that the thesis that knowledge is true belief is inconsistent with epistemic modesty