Logic, Coherence and Psychology

This paper will argue that (a) some notion of coherence and/or explanatory coherence is essential to understanding epistemic justification and to clarifying the rational support that our beliefs or commitments lend to each other, and that (b) the requisite notion of coherence cannot be fully explicated on the basis of logic and/or epistemology. Two candidates for explicating coherence will be examined: narrative coherence and the sort of coherence that obtains when gestalt closure is achieved. The paper will attempt to determine under what conditions acceptance that is determined or guided by these sorts of coherence can be construed as rational acceptance

Logical form and the link between premise and conclusion

This paper challenges the idea that purely formal or syntactic concepts can, in general, supply criteria for certifying that the premisses of arguments and inferences support their conclusions. It will maintain that neither deductively valid arguments nor inductively strong arguments can, in general, be identified by their logical form. The paper will attempt to clarify the role that patterns play in appraising arguments. Using argument schemas as an example, it will try to show that the identification of patterns can facilitate appraisal even when those patterns do not supply criter ia (sufficient or even necessary conditions) of support

On Understanding ‘Probably’ and Other Modal Qualifiers

An examination of several approaches to the force of ‘probably’, when used to qualify the conclusions of arguments and inferences. Among the views examined are those of Toulmin and Wilfrid Sellars. The paper recommends taking the utterance of “Probably p’ to be licensing or authorizing the adoption of a particular doxastic attitude toward p, and offers a functional account of that particular doxastic attitude, namely expecting that p will turn out to be the case

Truth and the virtue of arguments

In a 2006 paper I claimed that the virtue arguments or inferences must have is not that they be truth-preserving, but that they be entitlement-preserving (in Brandom’s sense of that phrase). I offered two reasons there why such a conception of argument virtue is needed for a satisfactory treatment of defeasible arguments and inferences. This paper revisits that claim, and assesses the prospects for a more thorough defence than was offered in that paper