Practices of Reason

Ladislav Koreň is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Social Sceinces, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. His areas of interest include epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of social sciences. His work has been published in international journals including Synthese, Inquiry, and Journal of Social Ontology. He is the co-editor, with Ondřej Beran and Vojtěch Kolman, of From Rules to Meanings: New Essays on Inferentialism (Routledge, 2018). He is also the coeditor, with Hans Bernhard Schmid, Preston Stovall and Leo Townsend, of Groups, Norms and Practices: Essays on Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality (2021).

• 1. IntroductionPart I: Moving in the Space of Reasons2. Assertion: A Pragmatic Genealogy3. Articulating a Space of ReasonsPart II: The Nature of Reasoning4. Reasoning: An Interactionist Approach5. Reasoning as Giving and Asking for ReasonsPart III: From Intersubjectivity to Objective Thought6. Shared World: Intersubjective Foundations7. Objective ThoughtPostscript

"This important book succeeds admirably in its principal aim: opening the conversation between normative inferentialist ideas from philosophy and some of the best current empirical work on the discursive abilities of creatures like us. The result is substantial reciprocal illumination of the ideas emerging from each." – Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburgh, USA"Many animals think, but humans assess evidence. How did such an ability emerge? Koreň articulates and defends the proposal that it was aided by social practices of giving and asking for reasons. In doing so, he advances the larger philosophical project of inferentialism—a core idea of which is that human reasoning is distinctively social and discursive—by bringing it into close and extended conversation with some of the best empirical work on the evolution of cognition. He also shows how inferentialism helps refine our interpretations of this work, getting us closer to the truth. Koreň writes with unusual clarity about these intriguing but difficult issues, making it easier for the rest of us to get to the truth with him." – Chauncey Maher, Dickinson College, USA