Why the Dialectical Tier is an Epistemic Animal

Ralph Johnson has proposed a “two tiered” conception of argument, comprising of the illative core and the dialectical tier. This paper's two-part thesis is that (i) the dialectical tier is best understood as an epistemic requirement for argument, and (ii) once understood epistemically, the dialectical tier requirement can be defended against the leading objections

Citizen Skeptic: Cicero’s Academic Republicanism

The skeptical challenge to politics is that if knowledge is in short supply and it is a condition for the proper use of political power, then there is very little just politics. Cicero’s Republicanism is posed as a program for political legitimacy wherein both citizens and their states are far from ideal. The result is a form of what is termed negative conservatism, which shows political gridlock in a more positive light

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

Methodological and Metaphilosophical Lessons in Plato’s Ion

From a detailed overview of Socrates’ exchange with Ion, light is shed on why Socrates’ method of elenchus requires explicit accounts of concepts at issue.  Moreover, Ion’s character is shown to provide an object lesson in the tempting vice of intellectual sycophancy

Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts

An intuitive view regarding the epistemic significance of disagreement says that when epistemic peers disagree, they should suspend judgment. This abstemious view seems to embody a kind of detachment appropriate for rational beings; moreover, it seems to promote a kind of conciliatory inclination that makes for irenic and cooperative further discussion. Like many strategies for cooperation, however, the abstemious view creates opportunities for free-riding. In this essay, the authors argue that the believer who suspends judgment in the face of peer disagreement is vulnerable to a kind of manipulation on the part of more tenacious peers. The result is that the abstemious view can have the effect of encouraging dogmatism