Questioning Stephen Stich’s Epistemic Pragmatism: What is Wrong With Its Consequentialist Approach to Reasoning Strategy Assessment?

In this paper, I examine and then criticize the two main assumptions underlying Stephen Stich’s Epistemic Pragmatism and its resulting consequentialist approach to reasoning strategy assessment, that is, (1) the rejection of truth as our main epistemic goal and (2) the relativity of any assessment of reasoning strategies. According to Epistemic Pragmatism, indeed, any evaluation of reasoning strategies is to be made in terms of their conduciveness to achieving what their users intrinsically value. However, since, as I will try to show, neither Stich’s argument supporting the dismissal of truth as our main epistemic goal nor his relativistic view on reasoning strategies’ assessments are well supported, I will conclude that Epistemic Pragmatism cannot provide by itself an adequate consequentialist framework for comparatively assessing people’s reasoning strategies and their epistemic merits.