Why and How We Give and Ask for Reasons

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.