Abstract

This work represents an effort to defend a pragmatic basis for the quality of reasoning. Such an account sees an instance of reasoning as good for someone to the extent that it leads to general ends which are of universal value to that person. The first half of the work is devoted to showing why the relationship between the meaning of beliefs used in reasoning and the meaning of beliefs created or destroyed through reasoning is so tight as to make any reasoning inference infallible. Since this semantic character of reasoning is infallible, it is invariable in quality, and thus illegitimate as the subject of some types of qualitative reasoning. The second half of the work concerns the development of a pragmatic standard for those legitimate qualitative reasoning principles. Questions on the application of pragmatism are also taken up