ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we bring together the themes that have appeared in the previous three, and begin to consider how human reasoning has been explained in general terms. While theorising about the nature of reason has been going on for as long as people have been thinking – Chapter 2 referred to Aristotle’s writing from 2400 years ago – recent research has brought about both fundamental changes and enormous progress in our understanding. The period we are living through is something of a golden age for this work. This is reflected in a genuine paradigm shift in our understanding, from logic-based approaches, on which we will focus in this chapter, to a view that takes probability as its starting point, which will be the focus of the next one.
