Potential informant and epistemically responsible

Two views on the regulation of arguers’ practices

Abstract

We discuss two ways of understanding the regulation of good argumentation that focus on the practices of arguers: Alvin Goldman's epistemic position model, according to which the arguer is an informant with verifying potential, and Christoph Lumer's reconstruction of the latter, according to which the arguer is an informant, but that this epistemic authority implies epistemic dependence on the part of the hearer and entails a peculiar kind of epistemic responsibility. Both proposals are part of what is now known as the epistemological approach to argumentation. Epistemologists of argument are concerned with the problem of standard function and purpose, in which they typically maintain that argumentation must have functions, purposes of an epistemic nature (truth and acceptability, etc.). Methodologically, they justify the functional thesis with criteria that seek to delimit the ideal conditions of good argumentation, how argumentation should work to achieve the purposes and fulfil these functions.