Epistemic and Dialectical Regress

Dialectical egalitarianism holds that every asserted proposition requires defence when challenged by an interlocutor. This view apparently generates a vicious “regress of justifications,” since an interlocutor can challenge the premises through which a speaker defends her original assertion, and so on ad infinitum. To halt the regress, dialectical foundationalists such as Adler, Brandom, Leite, and Williams propose that some propositions require no defence in light of mere requests for justification. I argue that the putative regress is not worrisome and that egalitarianism can handle it quite satisfactorily. I also defend a positive view that combines an anti-foundationalist conception of dialectical interaction with a foundationalist conception of epistemic justification. I. The regress argument(s) My topic is the perennial “regress of justifications.” If a proposition depends for its justification upon a second proposition, and that second proposition depends for its justification upon a third proposition, and so on, then infinite regress seemingly ensues. As Alston [1989: 26-32] and Audi [1993: 118-120] note, the regress arises in two versions: epistemological and dialectical. The first, concerning the structure of justification, emerges when we ask what justifies a given belief. The second, concerning the structure of rational dialectic, emerges when a speaker justifies an assertion to an interlocutor who persistently challenges her justifications. Recent attention has focused mainly on the epistemological regress. But a few commentators, such as Brandom