Stephen Downes

What is it for an argument to be successful? John Keller writes that as "argument evaluation is central to the philosophical enterprise" it's important to be clear about what that means. To this end he offers a taxonomy of theories of success and defends an 'knowledge account of epistemic success,' that is, "the concept of an argument that 'works'... is that arguments can establish their conclusions for certain people without establishing them for others, and that an argument establishes its conclusion for someone iff that person knows it to be sound and non-fallacious." The argument, in other words, must be truth-preserving, for truths as known by a given individual. That sounds find, but if we accept it, then we need to go back to the original assertion and ask whether that's what philosophy should be doing? And that is not so nearly clear to me.