Rationality, Reasonableness, and Critical Rationalism: Problems with the Pragma-dialectical View Harvey Siegel ® John Biro Published online: 23 January 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract A major virtue of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation is its commitment to reasonableness and rationality as central criteria of argumentative quality. However, the account of these key notions offered by the originators of this theory, Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, seems to us problematic in several respects. In what follows we criticize that account and suggest an alterna- tive, offered elsewhere, that seems to us to be both independently preferable and more in keeping with the epistemic approach to arguments and argumentation we favor. Keywords Critical rationalism Á Mu ¨nchhausen Trilemma Á Pragma-dialectic Á Rationality Á Reasonableness Á Justification A major virtue of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation 1 is its commitment to reasonableness and rationality as central criteria of argumentative quality. However, the account of these key notions offered by the originators of this theory, Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, seems to us problematic in several respects. In what follows we criticize that account and suggest an alternative, H. Siegel (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248054, Coral Gables, FL 33124-4670, USA e-mail: hsiegel@miami.edu J. Biro Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA e-mail: jbiro@phil.ufl.edu 1 The most recent systematic statement of the view is van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004), on which this discussion is based. All references in the text to these authors are to that book. 123 Argumentation (2008) 22:191–203 DOI 10.1007/s10503-007-9063-x