A theory of reasoned knowledge is presented by developing and demonstrating the methodology of a novel skeptical critique designed to extend the epistemological practice of belief justification to an epistemological practice of reason justification. Analyses of the reasoning found in the theorizations of certain seminal philosophers and leading scientists will reveal how the absence of the epistemic justification of reason defaults to the use of an unjustified form of reason that runs the play of an unrecognized and unchecked dialectic between (...) epistemology and science. An alternative form of reason will be logically outlined and tested against the formalized skeptical critique in order for the newly recognized dialectic to be checked over reason with provisional epistemic justification. Zeno’s paradox and Green’s and Sellars’ critique of givenness are employed as argument functionaries of the reasoned knowledge theory. (shrink)

Rorty saw the course of philosophy in the twentieth century as an effort to part from two major philosophical trends, namely historicism and naturalism, only to inevitably return at the end of a tortuous path to these very same tendencies. If we can concede without major objections Rorty’s diagnosis of the trends in contemporary continental and analytical philosophy, which seem to reveal the exhaustion of modern philosophy, based as it has been on epistemology, we must, on the other hand, examine (...) carefully the three main questions that this diagnosis leaves open: How does Rorty reconcile continental idealist subjectivism with materialistic behaviorism? Is it really inevitable that philosophy blinded by Geist are unable to question prevalent beliefs? Finally, is the acceptance of a liberalism that is not able to give reasons for itself the most effective and pragmatic liberalism? In answering these questions, it may not be possible to avoid a non-dogmatic, but pragmatic, metaphysics: a vocabulary of vocabularies that allows Rorty to speak of the problems of justice in Plato and Rawls, of the soul in Aristotle and Descartes, of the dystopias in Moro and Orwell. On pragmatic terms, perhaps a modest version of a metaphysic’s “vocabulary” turns out to be as legitimate and practical as any other vocabulary. (shrink)