Reasoning, as distinct from automatic inference, is defined as a purposeful effort to generate justifiable conclusions. It involves the conscious self-imposition of what one takes to be justifiable constraints on one’s thinking. Four general forms of reasoning case-based, law-based, coherence-based, and dialectical are distinguished on the basis of the types of constraints they seek to honor. The development of reasoning is presented as a continuing construction and reconstruction of self-constraints and justifications for those constraints, typically in the context of social and especially peer interaction. Undergirding the proposed account is an idealized model of epistemic subjects interacting in a context of intellectual freedom.

Keywords:
Constructivism, Epistemic subject, Inference, Intellectual freedom, Logic, Metacognition, Peer interaction, Rationality, Reasoning, Thinking
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© 1995 S. Karger AG, Basel
1995
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