La théorie de l’argumentation comme épistémologie sociale naturalisée

In this paper, I attempt to characterize the specificity of a social epistemologist viewpoint in argumentation theory by investigating Franz van Eemeren’s pragma-dialectics, the mainstream theory in this domain. This theory, inspired by Herbert-Paul Grice’s pragmatics, is supposed to be in conformity with Karl Popper and Hans Albert’s “critical rationalism”, which fits in with a “preservationist” viewpoint epistemologically speaking. However pragma-dialectics turns out to be “revisionist” epistemologically speaking, on assuming that norms of knowledge constitute only rules of good conduct for successful communication. Furthermore, sociologically speaking, although it does not introduce new sui generis entities such as epistemic communities or institutions (Alvin Goldman’s criterion of sociological expansionism), pragma-dialectics is already “expansionist”. Argumentation requires two potential interlocutors at least and taking account of this requirement already goes beyond epistemological solipsism – a stance that was explicit in Descartes’ philosophy and implicit in most classical theories of knowledge. If pragma-dialectics is reformulated on sounder epistemological bases, it may nevertheless constitute an important contribution to “naturalized” social epistemology by searching for norms of knowledge closer to effective and natural practices.