EBOOK Reasoning:A Social Picture

Thinking about reasoning suffers from a failure of vision. Philosophers, social        scientists, and others who discuss and analyze reasoning have a particular activity        in view: reasoning to figure things out, solve problems, and reach judgments. But        there is a different activity we engage in that we call reasoning. We reason in the        course of living together, when we are responsive to those with whom we live and        neither commanding nor deferring to them, neither manipulating norignoring them.          Analysis of this second kind of activity has relied on the tools and frameworks        developed to make sense of the first kind of activity. In this book, Anthony Simon        Laden invites his readers to approach this activity of reasoning on its own terms.          He claims that if we are to truly see andappreciate the role and value of reasoning        in living together, we need a new, social picture of the activity of reasoning.          According to the social picture of reasoning developed here, reasoning is a species        of conversation, and like casual conversation is social and ongoing. It is neither        defined nor determined by its end, although it is governed by a set of        characteristic norms. It consists of inviting others to accept that our words can        speak for them as well. Reasoning: A SocialPicture proposes an attractive new        approach to thinking about how to live together, reasonably.