ABSTRACT
In this fi nal chapter, I will lay out the argumentative norms I take to constitute the desideratum of dialecticality for justifi cation worth having. Arguments serve a purpose in our cognitive lives, in that they are the tools we use to make manifest the reasons we take to support our beliefs. The duty to argue well is the social face of the duty to reason well, and I take it that the social norms governing earnest second-personal argumentation are models for norms of our fi rst-personal reasonings. There are three objectives I want to achieve in laying out this model. The fi rst is to rebut the thought that arguments and reasoning that may be endless are thereby pointless. The fact that an issue may be dialectically fraught or require a greater degree of explicitness than we demand of each other in our passing interests is not a case against the project of thinking something through. Second, there are other models for argumentation that, instead of providing models for infi nitism, are models for contextualism or a modifi ed version of foundationalism, in this case a dialectical foundationalism. These models are criticized not just on their dialectical merits, but for their epistemological consequences. Third, I want to lay out a brief case for the objective of antidogmatism as something more worthy of our appreciation than antiskepticism. The reason why we got interested in epistemology, argumentation, and critical reasoning to begin with was to avoid being dogmatic; but once we got into the disciplines, the overarching opponent is the skeptic. The problem is that there are almost no real skeptics and skeptics pose very little danger to us, but dogmatists are everywhere they are exceedingly dangerous. I will close with a few words on a program for proper diachronic norms for infi nitism.
