Arguments and Reason-Giving

Arguments help us to give reasons for things. We use them to advance reasons for their conclusions in order to explain why we believe or did something, to justify our beliefs or actions, and to persuade others to do or to believe something. In Arguments and Reason-Giving, philosopher Matthew W. McKeon addresses the uses of arguments to advance their premises as reasons for believing their conclusions, that is, for believing that their conclusions are true.

This book has two parts. In the first part, McKeon develops a conception of reason-giving uses of arguments that aims to deepen our understanding of the argument-centric dimension of our practices of reason-giving in everyday contexts. Inference claims play a central role in reason-giving uses of arguments. You use an argument to advance its premises as reasons for believing the conclusion only if you claim that they are such reasons. Taking such reason-giving to be rationally intentional, you believe what you claim. In the second part of the book, McKeon appeals to this conception of reason-giving uses of arguments to shed light on the nature of their persuasive force, the nature of the inferential reasoning that is expressed, argumentative rationality, and intellectual honesty and intellectual integrity.

The notions of inference claims, reasons for belief, and reflective inferences provide the conceptual framework for the book’s engagement with reason-giving uses of arguments and rational persuasion, argumentative rationality, and intellectual honesty and integrity.

Matthew W. McKeon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University where he has been Chair of the Department of Philosophy since 2011.