The Debate Putnam-Rorty about Nature of Justification

Abstract

This paper examines the debate Putnam-Rorty about the scope and nature of justification. It affirms that, to make the idea of "reform" of standars of justification intelligible, we have to distinguish between what iscorrect and what seems correct. That implies that the correction of those standards is logically independent of the opinion of majority of members of the community. That points out certain trascendence of context that Rortyan ethnocentrism refuses. The same can be said about justification: it is logically independent of the opinion of majority. Fallibilism is possible because of this fact. The distinction between to be justified and to believe that it is justified does not need to be elucidated from God's Eye view; an opposition between actual and future or possible communities can be established from which reasons that we do not acknowledge now can be given.