ABSTRACT
The bulk of this introductory chapter brings attention to acts of inference specifically in communication. They are the paradigms of reasoning, as they serve as the context and training ground in which humans are launched into community practices of inference. Communication is (to shift metaphors) the scaffold that allows us to rise to increasingly greater heights of reasoning. From our analysis of the communications context, we draw the conclusion that human reasoning practices are based on the fundamental principle that logical consequence is a relation between acts in the first instance—on one hand, such things as smiles and food sharing, and on the other hand, undertakings of friendly concern and the like—rather than strictly between propositions, what I shall call the zeroeth principle of logic. The consequences of the zeroeth principle of logic are very wide-ranging. It is key to understanding reasoning, action and human behavior at every scale. And it forces us to confront the most fundamental problem of human life: the problem of trust. All of this is consonant with the proper construal of reasoning as the activity of traversing a pathway—explicitly or otherwise—through a space of thought, which journey may be undertaken by any entity with sufficient awareness of something as an act or move. The Introduction concludes with a discussion of the ambitions of this book and how a reader might approach it.
