Abstract
In this ambitious and engaging book, Anthony Laden advances an alternative account of reasoning to the standard picture dominant within philosophy and the social sciences. According to the standard picture, reasoning is something that we do in order to answer questions or solve problems. These can be questions of theoretical reason (‘what should I believe?’) or practical reason (‘what should I do?’). Such reasoning is episodic and end-driven. Reasoning has a job to do, and if conclusions about what to believe or do are not found, then reasoning has failed. Furthermore, the activity of reasoning is defined derivatively, in terms of reasons, a faculty of reason, or principles of reasoning. We are reasoning well when we correctly identify or formulate reasons. And while interacting with others may improve the quality of our reasoning, reasoning is not itself an inherently social activity. Finally, reasons enjoy what Laden calls the ‘authority of command’: the conclusions of (correct) reasoning command us to comply with them, either in shaping our beliefs or in determining our actions.
As an alternative to the standard picture, Laden advances a social picture of reasoning. In reasoning, we offer considerations (potential reasons) as ‘invitations’ to others, which, if taken up, become what Laden calls ‘“we”-reasons’. Such reasons are constructed and revised through ongoing discourse; reasoning is the continual working out of the terms on which we live together. Thus, the activity of reasoning has primacy within the social picture; reasons are defined derivatively, as the products of this activity. Such reasoning is not episodic or end-defined, although it frequently yields (revisable) claims about what to believe, value, or do. The reasons that emerge from this activity enjoy what Laden calls the ‘authority of connection’: they change our ‘normative environment’ not by issuing commands to us, but through shared processes of construction, clarification, and revision. And the authority of connection, unlike that of command, frequently is ‘forward-looking’ in nature, as it depends upon the acceptance of invitations we extend to others.
The book proceeds in three parts, the first of which is an overview of the social picture. Laden explains that the social picture combines descriptive and normative elements. It is descriptive in that it illuminates aspects of our existing practices. For instance, the social picture explicates the rational significance of everyday conversations. It also is normative in that it describes an idealized, yet feasible, version of such practices and reasoning in general, what Rawls (2001) terms a ‘realistic utopia’. The normativity of an ideal derives from its capacity to inspire our acceptance. Insofar as we endorse an ideal, though, it imposes certain constraints on our actions.
The second part of the book develops the social picture by looking at three kinds of activities and their ‘characteristic norms’. Laden begins with conversations. ‘According to the social picture of reasoning’, Laden writes, ‘reasoning is a species of conversation’ (p. 79). Laden identifies three characteristic norms of conversation: attunement (participants are open to being affected by what others say), equality (all participants can influence the course of conversation), and sincerity. One interesting implication of Laden’s account of the rational significance of conversation is that social inequality can undermine or even prevent mutual intelligibility, and that overcoming such barriers involves not disengagement but finding new terms through further conversation. This aspect of the social picture has important educational implications: students within a diverse democratic society, especially those from privileged backgrounds, must learn how to converse with those from different backgrounds in order to reason with them.
Reasoning is what Laden calls ‘responsive conversation’. Here, the norms are more demanding than those of casual conversation, as we put forward considerations as invitations, understood as attempts to speak for others. The norms of responsive conversation include publicity (we aim to make our proposed reasons available for sharing), reciprocity (proposals are answerable to all participants), and good faith (which requires, inter alia, that participants be responsive to the rejection of their invitations by others). While the participants in responsive conversations may end up not agreeing with one another – they may accept that they must ‘agree to disagree’, at least with respect to certain issues – there is pressure to render one’s positions intelligible, coherent, and plausible to others. Conversation that complies with these norms is reasoning on the social picture: reasons are defined derivatively vis-à-vis this activity.
‘Engagements’ are a subspecies of responsive conversations in which participants have ‘joint ends’. The norms that apply to engaged reasoning are those of ‘reasonableness’: participants offer considerations that they sincerely take to be reasons for their fellow participants, and the rejection of considerations shapes the course of further engagement. Participants in engagements issue invitations with the aim of finding common ground in the form of shared reasons in response to shared concerns. Through engaged reasoning ‘plural subjects’ can emerge or be reconstituted. ‘People form a plural subject’, Laden claims, ‘when they . . . share an understanding of their relationship and the reasons it authorizes’ (pp. 177–178). Furthermore, reasonable engagement proceeds by means of ‘deliberation’, the working out of shared solutions to shared concerns, rather than by ‘negotiation’, which aims at finding acceptable compromises among conflicting interests.
In the final part of the book, Laden outlines how the activity of social reasoning can yield different kinds of reasons. He begins by identifying different grounds for reasonably rejecting invitations. These include rejecting invitations that are unreasonable in virtue of violating any of the norms mentioned earlier; rejecting invitations on the basis of existing shared reasons; rejecting invitations that, if accepted as reasons, would subvert further attempts to reason together; and rejecting invitations that, if accepted as reasons, would undermine the ability of persons to treat other considerations as reasons, say, by conferring upon one aspect of themselves a kind of ‘dictatorial authority’. Reasoning successfully requires what Laden calls a ‘democratic unity of the self’ (p. 222), according to which all aspects of one’s self (beliefs, values, commitments, and so forth) can contribute to reasoning. Such unity includes constructing and maintaining an overall cohesion among the various plural subjects to which one belongs, and the various reasons of those plural subjects. This coherence and ‘intra-psychic availability’ is called ‘integrity’ by Laden (pp. 222–224). Achieving and maintaining one’s integrity provides a basis for evaluating invitations, including rejecting those that threaten one’s integrity.
We also can respond to invitations not simply from individual ‘evaluative standpoints’, but from social ones as well, namely, those of the various plural subjects to which we belong (families, scientific associations, political communities, and so forth). Furthermore, there are norms of ‘mutual intelligibility’ that enable us to evaluate and respond to proposed reasons. Mutual intelligibility imposes certain requirements on our attempts to reason together, Laden explains, ‘among which are those that support reference to means-end relationships and schemas of theoretical reasoning’ (p. 253). Instrumental and theoretical reasoning, then, are encompassed within the social picture.
As this summary indicates, this is a wide-ranging, original, and stimulating book. Given its ambitious scope, there inevitably are aspects of the view in need of further clarification. I briefly note two of them here.
First, I was unable to discern a deep normative difference between the authority of connection that is part of the social picture, and a ‘democratic’ version of the authority of command within the standard picture. As Laden notes, ‘philosophers have tried to model the authority of reasons on the authority of democratic law’ (p. 53). According to this conception, persons (to borrow some terminology from Rousseau) simultaneously are both ‘sovereigns’ and ‘subjects’, that is, they both contribute to the identification or construction of reasons and are subject to the authority of those reasons. Consequently, on the democratic conception, no individual exercises a unilateral capacity to shape some portion of the shared normative environment. The democratic version of the authority of command, like the authority of connection, involves reciprocity. And, as in the social picture, no proposed reason is beyond criticism, revision, or rejection.
Laden criticizes the democratic conception of the authority of command as a form of ‘mutual hierarchy’ (p. 66). Moreover, the democratic conception of the standard picture remains episodic, whereas the social picture construes reasoning as ongoing. But why could a democratic version of the standard picture not allow for wide-ranging deliberation (as opposed to negotiation) both before determining (‘voting on’) an issue and afterwards? The democratic version of the standard picture, Laden acknowledges, allows that any issue may be reopened in the future. It is not clear to me, then, why a thoroughly democratized version of the standard picture cannot realize many of the virtues Laden identifies as belonging to the social picture. In particular, both accounts presuppose reciprocity and openness to criticism as requirements in the determination of reasons.
Second, it is not clear to me how we should understand the relation between the two pictures of reasoning. Within a picture, Laden observes, ‘disparate elements fit or hang together in a certain way, so that the adoption of one part of the picture pushes us to adopt its other features’ (p. 42). The social picture looks quite comprehensive: it covers almost every kind of activity that we think of as reasoning within the standard picture (the only exception seems to be the case of negotiation, which is contrasted, unfavorably, with deliberation in chapter 6). Laden claims, though, that the two pictures are not mutually exclusive. ‘Both are important human activities’, he writes, ‘On many occasions we engage in both of them’ (p. 9). Despite this ecumenical proclamation, however, the dialectic of the book struck me as that of explaining the advantages of the social picture over the standard picture. When is it appropriate for us to reason in accordance with the standard picture instead of the social picture (aside from those situations in which negotiation is necessary)? How can we engage in both kinds of reasoning with respect to the same topic, and how would the reasons thereby generated be related to each other? I could not find answers to these questions within Laden’s discussion.
These two comments are invitations for clarification. Overall, I found the social picture of reasoning illuminating of many of our practices and, moreover, an inspiring ideal. It is a view that Laden (2013) proposes has significant educational implications. I enthusiastically invite readers to explore the realistic utopia described in this book.