What Is Reasoning? A Criterion by Which Reasoning Can Be Established

This paper examines a foundational question: What is reasoning? Across philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, reasoning is commonly discussed through inference, deduction, induction, abduction, deliberation, problem solving, judgment, and the drawing of conclusions. These approaches provide substantial knowledge about the forms, mechanisms, standards, and performance of reasoning, but they do not all address the same question. This paper distinguishes the identification of reasoning from the evaluation of reasoning and proposes an actor-independent criterion by which reasoning can be established: Reasoning is an evidentiary conclusion based on referenced information relative to an established orientation. The criterion is relational and operates as a whole. It does not require that referenced information or the resulting conclusion be correct, nor does it prescribe a particular mechanism, substrate, actor, degree of sophistication, or standard of performance. The purpose is not to determine whether reasoning is good, reliable, conscious, creative, human-like, or otherwise characterized. It addresses the prior question of whether reasoning occurred, providing a common criterion that can be applied without first requiring equivalence between human, artificial, or other potential reasoning systems.