First‐Order Reasoning

Reasoning is a process whereby some of your attitudes cause you to acquire a new attitude. Not just any such process is reasoning; to be reasoning the process must satisfy some particular conditions. In this chapter, the author identifies what those conditions are. First, he is concerned with active reasoning and identifies conditions that make a process specifically active reasoning. The author also explains how these conditions make the process an act — something you do. Second, the author presents a particular account of reasoning: the first-order account. In introducing the first-order account of reasoning in the chapter, he applies it to belief reasoning. Belief reasoning is a sort of theoretical reasoning, but there may be other sorts of theoretical reasoning too. Reasoning can improve your rationality by bringing you to satisfy requirements of rationality that are not themselves requirements on reasoning.