A constructive analysis of reasoning as a self-corrective process of learning in which a dialectic between inquiry and anomaly, between intuition and inference, between analysis and synthesis, between induction and deduction, gradually produces a virtually unconditioned but always corrigible solution to a problem. The argument is both a synthesis of contributions from classical and modern philosophers to the interpretation of learning and an attempt to bridge the gap between critical thinking and formal logic in the analysis of reasoning. The aim (...) is to show that learning as well as demonstration has a logic susceptible to philosophical analysis. (shrink)