Overview

The social practices and skills for giving, assessing, and responding to reasons play a key role in the constitution of uniquely human conceptual, epistemic, and deliberative powers. It is thus of great interest to explore why and how humans give and ask for reasons. In addition, it is increasingly recognized that an adequate understanding of such questions calls for a multi-perspectival, often dialogical, cross-fertilizing and integrative approach. Current research at the interface of philosophy and the sciences is already yielding new data, explanations, and predictions concerning the origins, purposes, development, and consequences of human discursive practices and skills, but representative overviews of this research are still missing from the literature.Why and How We Give and Ask for Reasons aims to fill this lacuna by bringing together new essays that approach the topic from integrative perspectives that promise to stimulate future research. The chapter authors include established figures in both philosophy and the sciences, as well as a number of younger scholars. The volume as a whole enables philosophers, cognitive scientists, developmental and comparative psychologists, and evolutionary anthropologists to deepen discussions on the reason-querying accounts of human cognition.

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9780197745083

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Reviews

Interpersonal discourse might be conceived, not as the expression of, but as the origin of individual reasoning. Most of the papers in this collection defend some aspect of this conception. The remainder push back against the more extreme forms. The volume breaks new ground in this fundamental debate. * Christopher Gauker, University of Salzburg * This collection, written by both major players and new voices and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, sheds important new light on the individual and social, dialogical/discursive practices involved in giving and asking for reasons. Philosophical, logical, psychological, and evolutionary analyses of the development of human rational capacities and the cost/benefit trade-offs involved in their use offer important new interdisciplinary insights. The social/dialogical origins and functions and evolutionary payoffs of reasoning practices loom large, as does the relationship between the development of the rational capacities employed in reasoning and the normative standing of the reasons so employed. The papers advance contemporary discussions in several challenging directions. Highly recommended! * Harvey Siegel, University of Miami *

Author Information

Preston Stovall is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, and the author of The Single-Minded Animal: Shared Intentionality, Normativity, and the Foundations of Discursive Cognition. He works in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. Ladislav Koren is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic and the director of the Language, Mind, Society Center based at this department. His areas of interest include philosophy of cognitive sciences, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and the philosophy of psychology.

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