ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that there is no strong reason to suppose that over the centuries have changed the way in which reason. At least that is so if make a critical distinction between enthymematic reasoning and fundamental reasoning. Alvin Goldman view is a view about what makes a belief justified. But it also suggests that in the case of belief-dependent processing, the epistemic agent engages in a kind of reasoning – a kind of “movement,” at least, from the input beliefs to the output beliefs. Ancient people who tried to predict the outcome of battles by reading the entrails of birds almost certainly recognized that they were relying on suppressed premises. Most obviously, they probably realized that they needed a justified belief that there is some sort of correlation between the entrails being bloody and their fortunes going badly.
