ABSTRACT
Epistemically circular reasoning, we have argued, is forceless. In particular, when deployed to show that a mode of reasoning is rational, it offers nothing in the way of genuine grounds for belief since the cogency of the form of the reasoning itself is the question at issue. But at the level of the principles of deduction this stricture seems to raise a problem. How can one be justified in taking the principles of deductive reasoning themselves to be truth-preserving? Surely any cogent argument for the validity of deductive reasoning must use deduction. But will not any such argument, however rigorous, be epistemically circular? And if one is not justified by argument, then how? It appears that in criticizing epistemic circularity, we may have opened ourselves to a damaging tu quoque.
