ABSTRACT
Though the word ‘philosophy’ means the love of wisdom, what interests philosophers most is reason. And small wonder; for reason, considered in its own right, is both the primary tool and the special province of philosophy. Philosophers reason about various matters of fact – the existence of God, the external world, and other minds, for example – but they also reason about pieces of reasoning. And at the deepest levels they reason about reason itself, its scope and limits, its various structures, its foundations, and its relation to the concepts of truth, justification, and knowledge.
