How Rejecting Incompatible Speech Acts Transforms Human Cognition

Abstract

Engaging with the literature on transformative conceptions of rationality, I argue for the following position on the way reason transforms human cognition: when the capacity for knowing that one ought to do something is directed at one's own speech acts, an initially domain-specific and practical grasp of genus/species relations – manifest in the ability to select among the various permitted ways to do as one judges one ought – becomes a mechanism through which the reflective study of genus/species relations hones the domain-general classificatory abilities that accompany adult human language use. In this fashion, our instinctive behaviors may be transformed: we might cease to respond to events simply as (e.g.) fearful or enraging, recognize these motivations as cases of cowardice and recklessness, and begin to treat them as opportunities for courage and restraint.