The Epistemic / Epistemological Theory of Argument

This article presents the epistemic or, more precisely, epistemological theory of argument. According to this theory, the standard aim of arguments is to lead an addressee to an epistemologically justified and acceptable belief in the thesis. The article provides an instrumentalist justification of this approach (arguments are good instruments for guided knowledge acquisition), presents other functions of arguments, and offers an analysis of how arguments work. This analysis then serves as the basis for developing criteria for various good types of argument (deductive, probabilistic, practical, etc.) and for general criteria for epistemologically good arguments. A final outlook provides an overview of contributions from epistemological argumentation theorists on standard topics in argumentation theory: interpretation of arguments, (cooperative) argumentative dialogues, critical thinking, argumentation pedagogy.