Preston Stovall - Böcker

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.

The essays in this collection explore the idea that discursive norms—the norms governing our thought and talk—are profoundly social. Not only do these norms govern and structure our social interactions, but they are sustained by a variety of social and institutional structures.The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. The first offers historical perspectives on discursive norms, including a chapter by Robert Brandom on the way Hegel transformed Kant’s normativist approach to representation by adding both a social and a historicist dimension to it. Section II features four chapters that examine the sociality of normativity from within a broadly naturalistic framework. The third and final section focuses on the social dimension of linguistic phenomena such as online speech acts, oppressive speech, and assertions.The Social Institution of Discursive Norms will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy.

This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology.Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others. Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.

This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology.Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others. Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.

The essays in this collection explore the idea that discursive norms—the norms governing our thought and talk—are profoundly social. Not only do these norms govern and structure our social interactions, but they are sustained by a variety of social and institutional structures.The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. The first offers historical perspectives on discursive norms, including a chapter by Robert Brandom on the way Hegel transformed Kant’s normativist approach to representation by adding both a social and a historicist dimension to it. Section II features four chapters that examine the sociality of normativity from within a broadly naturalistic framework. The third and final section focuses on the social dimension of linguistic phenomena such as online speech acts, oppressive speech, and assertions.The Social Institution of Discursive Norms will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy.

This edited volume examines the relationship between collective intentionality and inferential theories of meaning. The final part consists of essays that offer a closer examination of themes from inferentialism and collective intentionality that arise in the work of Wilfrid Sellars.