Unsafe reasoning: a survey



Document title: Unsafe reasoning: a survey
Journal: Dois pontos (Curitiba)
Database: CLASE
System number: 000314202
ISSN: 1807-3883
Authors: 1
Institutions: 1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. Brasil
Year:
Season: Oct
Volumen: 6
Number: 2
Pages: 185-201
Country: Brasil
Language: Inglés
Document type: Artículo
Approach: Analítico, crítico
English abstract Judgments about the validity of at least some elementary inferential patterns (say modus ponens) are a priori if anything is. Yet a number of empirical conditions must in each case be satisfied in order for a particular inference to instantiate this or that inferential pattern. We may on occasion be entitled to presuppose that such conditions are satisfied (and the entitlement may even be a priori), yet only experience could tell us that such was indeed the case. Current discussion about a perceived incompatibility between content externalism and first-person authority exemplifies how damaging the neglect of such empirical presuppositions of correct reasoning can be. An externalistic view of mental content is ostensibly incompatible with the assumption that a rational subject should be able to avoid inconsistency no matter what the state of her empirical knowledge may be. That fact, however, needs not be taken (as it often is) as a reductio of externalism: alternatively, we may reject that assumption, adding to the agenda of a philosophical investigation of rationality an examination of the vicissitudes of logical luck. I offer an illustration and defense of that alternative
Disciplines: Filosofía
Keyword: Lógica,
Gnoseología,
Validez,
Realidad,
Experiencia,
Verdad,
Externalismo,
Coherencia,
Inferencia
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