The Enigma of Reason

Introduction: A Double Enigma

p 7

Much recent thinking about thinking revolves around a contrast between intuition and reasoning as if these were two quite different forms of inference. We will maintain, on the contrary, that reasoning is itself a kind of intuitive inference.

Reason, we will argue, is a mechanism for intuitive inferences about one kind of representations, namely, reasons.

p 8

Reason, we argue, has two main functions: that of producing reasons for justifying oneself, and that of producing arguments to convince others.

I Shaking Dogma

2 Psychologists' Travails, p 36

Gottlob Frege, the German founder of modern logic, had denounced the very idea that logic is about human reasoning as a fallacy, the fallacy of “psychologism”: logic is no more about human reasoning than arithmetics is about people's understanding and use of quantities.

II Understanding Inference

3 From Unconscious Inferences to Intuition, p 54

Charles Darwin commented in his diary that one should consider “the origin of reason as gradually developed”.

Figure 8. Monsters in a tunnel, p 58

III Rethinking Reason

p 106

Reason is a mechanism in which logic plays at best a marginal role.

7 How We Use Reason, p 108

Most reasons are after-the-fact rationalizations.

8 Could Reason Be a Module?

Reasoning is not an alternative to intuitive inferences; reasoning is a use of intuitive inferences about reasons.

9 Reasoning: Intuition and Reflection, p 154

Reason Relies on Language

p 158

In Reasoning, Logic Is a Heuristic Tool

10 Reason: What Is It For? p 180

From an evolutionary point of view, one should expect reasoning mechanisms to have evolved as responses to specific problems that had been recurrent in the ancestral environment. Specialized adaptations do a much better job of addressing the problems they evolved to handle than would any general problem-solving ability.

p 181

Cooperation is an interaction between two more individuals where each incurs a cost and receives a benefit [...] However, in many cases, each cooperator stands to gain more by sharing in the benefits without paying the full cost, in other terms by cheating or free riding [...] The identification of cheaters should be seen as a major problem in human evolution.

p 183

Reason fulfills two main functions. One helps to solve a major problem of coordination by producing justifications. The other helps to solve a major problem of communication by producing arguments.

IV What Reason Can and Cannot Do

11 Why Is Reasoning Biased? p 214

Psychologists agree that the confirmation bias is prevalent. They also agree it is a bad thing.

12 Quality Control: How We Evaluate Arguments, p 235

Table 2. The two faces of reason

	Bias	Quality control
Production of reasons	Biased: people mostly produce reasons for their side	Lazy: people are not very exigent toward their own reasons
Evaluation of others' reasons	Unbiased: people accept even challenging reasons, if those reasons are strong enough	Demanding: people are convinced only by good enough reasons

14 A Reason for Everything

Reason-based choice: when people have weak or conflicting intuitions, reason drives them toward the decision that is easier to justify.

V Reason in the Wild

16 Is Human Reason Universal? p 279

Historical, anthropological, and linguistic evidence points us to a potentially damning flaw in our argument so far: the focus on examples and experimemts from Western cultures. As a group of cross-cultural psychologists and anthropologists recently put it, these are WEIRD people—people coming from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic countries.

17 Reasoning about Moral and Political Topics, p 314

In 1807, both houses (Commons and Lords) voted to abolish the slave trade.

Conclusion: In Praise of Reason after All