Reasoning: A Social Picture

Abstract

Most philosophical and social scientific work that discusses reason starts from a picture of reason that treats the activity of reasoning as a means of navigating our environment in the pursuit of various ends. This book offers an alternative, social picture of reasoning that pictures the activity of reasoning as a way of interacting with others that is reciprocal and responsive. On this picture, reasoning is to be contrasted with other forms of interaction, such as commanding or deferring. Reasoning is characterized as a social, ongoing activity that involves people inviting others to take what they say as speaking for them as well. So understood, it is a species of casual conversation, not primarily a form of calculation. Part I lays out the basic features of the social picture, and discusses the kind of authority it generates and the nature of casual conversation, of which reasoning is a form. Part II discusses the characteristic norms of three nested activities: casual conversation, reasoning and engaged reasoning. Part III discusses the principles that guide those reasoning as they respond to invitations that their reasoning partners make. These include principles that require attention to a form of self-preservation called integrity, and the connection between our ends and their means.