Why reason? Hugo Mercier's and Dan Sperber's The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding
Abstract
The standard view of the function of reason is that it emerged to enable individuals to make better judgements and choices. Once individuals could think better, and once we had suitable communicative tools, individual reasoning acquired a public face; we reasoned together as well as privately, in our own mind. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that this gets the story the wrong way around: reasoning evolved for public purposes: to persuade, negotiate, assess. Once it was established publically, perhaps it acquired a private function too. With the exception of a few minor complaints, this evolutionary case is well made. However, Mercier and Sperber embed their evolutionary case within a modular view of the mind and suggest a modular view of public reasoning itself. While I find the evolutionary case persuasive, I am sceptical of the cognitive science framework.
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Even if objections depend on private information, they also often derive from obvious interests and public knowledge, making an anticipation of them easy.
“And even if it is granted that objections depend on private information, they also often derive from obvious interests and public knowledge, making an anticipation of them easy (ibid).”
From What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias? (2022) · cites this paper as Sterelny 2018
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What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?
Peters, U. (2022) · Erkenntnis · doi:10.1007/s10670-020-00252-1 · Cited by 163 · see citing works
- Authors
- Sterelny, K.
- Affiliations
- Australian National University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Sterelny, Kim
- ORCID
- Sterelny, Kim
- Venue
- Mind & Language
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-08-23
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 502-512
- ISSN
- 0268-1064 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-0017
- OpenAlex
- W2888314938
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Mind & Language (publishedVersion)
- ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- public reasoning, persuasion, negotiation, modular mind, Dan Sperber
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