## Metadata - Author: [[Hugo Mercier]] - Full Title: The Enigma of Reason - Category: #books ## Highlights - reason is more efficient in evaluating good arguments than in producing them: when the arguments are there, the scientific community is able to elevate the status of a new theory from fringe to textbook material in a few years. ([Location 252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=252)) - reason, we maintain, is first and foremost a social competence. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=255)) - Specialists of reasoning do not agree among themselves. Actually, the polemics in which they are engaged are hot enough to have been described as “rationality wars.” This very lack of agreement among specialists who, one hopes, are all good reasoners, is particularly ironic: sophisticated reasoning on reasoning does not come near providing a consensual understanding of reasoning itself. ([Location 390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=390)) - In logic, the word “argument” describes a timeless and abstract sequence of propositions from premises to conclusion. In ordinary usage, on the other hand, an argument is the production, in one’s mind or in conversation, of one or several reasons one after the other in order to justify some conclusion. ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=680)) - The ability to represent representations with ease and to draw a variety of intuitive inferences about them may well be the most original and characteristic features of the human mind. ([Location 1602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=1602)) - A whole field of research initiated in the early 1980s showed that around the age of four, children readily attribute false beliefs to others (which, for good or bad reasons, has become the litmus test of genuine mindreading). ([Location 1669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=1669)) - Arguably, “rationality” in a most basic sense is synonymous with inferential efficiency. ([Location 1697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=1697)) - We have clear intuitions about the “goodness” of various explanations. As the psychologist Frank Keil and his colleagues have shown, these intuitions may not be very reliable when they concern our own ability to provide explanations.16 We often greatly overestimate, for instance, our ability to explain how domestic appliances we use every day actually work. We are, however, better at evaluating the explanations given by others. ([Location 1813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=1813)) - Reasons are social constructs. They are constructed by distorting and simplifying our understanding of mental states and of their causal role and by injecting into it a strong dose of normativity. Invocations and evaluations of reasons are contributions to a negotiated record of individuals’ ideas, actions, responsibilities, and commitments. This partly consensual, partly contested social record of who thinks what and who did what for which reasons plays a central role in guiding cooperative or antagonistic interactions, in influencing reputations, and in stabilizing social norms. Reasons are primarily for social consumption. ([Location 2209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2209)) - Why indeed do we have intuitions at all? Here, as an aside, is a speculative answer. To distinguish a thought of your own as an intuition is to take a stance of personal authority on the content of that thought. This stance, we suggest, is less relevant to your own individual thinking than it is to the way in which you might communicate that thought to others. An intuition is a thought that, you feel, you may assert on your own authority, without an argument or an appeal to the authority of a third party. To make an assertion (or propose a course of action) on the basis of your intuition is a social move that puts others in the situation of having either to accept it or to express distrust not just in what you are saying but in your authority for saying it. By expressing an intuition as such, you are raising the stakes: you stand to gain in authority if it is accepted, and to lose if it is not. Even if your assertion is rejected, however, putting it forward as an intuition of yours may help you withstand the authority or arguments of others. ([Location 2349](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2349)) - Contrary to the commonsense view, what happens is not that we derive intuitive conclusions from reasons that we would somehow possess. What we do, rather, is derive reasons for our intuitions from these intuitions themselves by a further process of intuitive backward inference. We infer what our reasons must have been from the conclusions we intuitively arrived at. We typically construct our reasons as an after-the-fact justification. We attribute reasons to others in the same way: to the extent that we trust their competence, we tend to trust their intuitions and to infer their reasons through the same process of backward inference. When we don’t trust their competence, a similar process of backward inference will settle for apparent reasons that we ourselves find too weak or flawed to justify their intuitive conclusions but that they may have found good enough. When we believe others to be mistaken, we are typically content to attribute to them blatantly poor reasons. ([Location 2470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2470)) - Reasons, we have argued, are for social consumption. People think of reasons to explain and justify themselves. In so doing, they accept responsibility for their opinions and actions as justified by them; they implicitly commit themselves to norms that determine what is reasonable and that they expect others to observe. In giving reasons, people take the risk of seeing their reasons challenged. They also claim the right to challenge the reasons of others. Someone’s reputation is, to a large extent, the ongoing effect of a conversation spread out in time and social space about that person’s reasons. In giving our reasons, we try to take part in the conversation about us and to defend our reputation. We influence the reputation of others by the way we evaluate and discuss their reasons. ([Location 2482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2482)) - A cultural community may favor certain types of reasons such as reliance on specific authorities. It may unequally recognize the competence of women and men, young and old, socially inferior and superior, in invoking reasons. It may condone some irrational reasons, such as premonitory dreams. What a community cannot do is build a battery of reasons all of its own. Everywhere, people’s intuitions about reasons are anchored in cognitive competencies that, to a large extent, they share as members of the human species, competencies that contribute to humans’ cognitive efficiency, that is, rationality in a basic sense of the term. Without such cognitive anchoring, we doubt that any norms of rationality could ever emerge and be maintained in a social group. ([Location 2503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2503)) - The public representations of beliefs and intentions as guided by personal reasons are a fundamental aspect of human social interaction. These representations, we suggest, are produced by a dedicated metarepresentational module. All our reasons are, directly or indirectly, outputs of this module. ([Location 2514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2514)) - We surmise that most human reasoning, even excellent reasoning of the kind that is supposed to make us humans so superior, rarely involves more than one or two levels of arguments. ([Location 2672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2672)) - Classical deductive logic is “monotonic.” This means that if some conclusion logically follows from some initial set of premises, it also follows from any larger set of premises that includes the initial set. ([Location 2903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=2903)) - The explanatory use of reasons, we suggest, is in the service of its justificatory use: it links reasons to persons so that good reasons are seen as justifying not just a thought or an action but also the thinker of that thought, the agent of that action. ([Location 3276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=3276)) - A good way to convince addressees is to actively help them check the coherence of your claims with what they already believe (including what they have just unproblematically accepted from you) or, even better if possible, to help them realize that given their beliefs, it would be less coherent for them to reject your claims than to accept them. In other words, as a communicator addressing a vigilant audience, your chances of being believed may be increased by making an honest display of the very coherence your audience will anyhow be checking. A good argument consists precisely in displaying coherence relationships that the audience can evaluate on their own. ([Location 3438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=3438)) - Even one-year-old babies expect others to share their surprise. When they see something surprising, they point toward it to share their surprise with nearby adults. ([Location 3660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=3660)) - The experiments presented earlier, which prompted psychologists to deplore the poor quality of the reasons put forward by participants, did not take place in a typical dialogic context. When a normal interlocutor is not swayed by a reason, she offers counterarguments, pushing the speaker to provide better reasons. An experimenter, by contrast, remains neutral. She may prompt the participant for more arguments, but she doesn’t argue back. If reason evolved to function in an interactive back-and-forth, strong arguments should be expected only when they are called for by an equally strong pushback. ([Location 3987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=3987)) - The basic trigger of reasoning is a clash of ideas with an interlocutor. This clash prompts us to try to construct arguments to convince the other or at least to defend one’s own position. This trigger works also in the absence of an actual interlocutor, in anticipation of a possible disagreement. Sometimes this anticipation may be quite concrete: a meeting is already scheduled to try to resolve a disagreement or to debate opposing ideas. At other times, we might just anticipate a chance encounter with, say, a political opponent, and mentally prepare and rehearse arguments we would then be eager to use. There are even times when we replay debates that have already taken place and think, alas, too late of arguments that we should have used. ([Location 4378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=4378)) - Just as we evaluate others, they evaluate us. It is important to us that they should form a good opinion of us: this will make them more willing to cooperate and less inclined to act against us. Given this, it is desirable to act efficiently not only in order to attain our goals but also in order to secure a good reputation. Our reasons for acting the way we do shouldn’t just be good reasons; they should be reasons that are easily recognized as good. ([Location 4546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=4546)) - In some situations, our best personal reasons might be too complicated, or they might go against common wisdom, and hence be detrimental to our reputation. In such a case, it may be more advantageous to make a less-than-optimal choice that is easier to justify than an optimal choice that will be seen as incompetent. We might lose in terms of the practical payoff but score social points yielding a higher overall payoff. ([Location 4550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=4550)) - In Chapters 11 through 14, we have emphasized the “bad” sides of reason, those that have given rise to an enigma in the first place: reason is biased; reason is lazy; reason makes us believe crazy ideas and do stupid things. If we put reason in an evolutionary and interactivist perspective, these traits make sense: a myside bias is useful to convince others; laziness is cost-effective in a back-and-forth; reason may lead to crazy ideas when it is used outside of a proper argumentative context. We have also repeatedly stressed that all of this is for the best—in the right context, these features of reason should turn into efficient ways to divide cognitive labor. ([Location 4660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=4660)) - Here is Montaigne: The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether tedious in discourse. ([Location 4727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=4727)) - Of the two classic depictions of the original state of humanity—the “noble savage” and Thomas Hobbes’s “war of all against all”—neither offers a good context for argumentation. The noble savage would not have had the motivation to engage in argumentation. The war of all against all offers even fewer opportunities for debates to flourish. These views are nowhere near the truth. Our ancestors were neither living in harmony with one another nor waging constant war against one another. And argumentation may have played at least as important a role in their social lives as in in ours. When a collective decision has to be made in a modern democracy, people go to the voting booth. Our ancestors sat down and argued—at least if present-day small-scale societies are any guide to the past. In most such societies across the globe, when a grave problem threatens the group—ecological crisis, war, protection of common resources—people gather, debate, and work out a solution that most find satisfying.26 Even the most egalitarian of our modern societies looks quite hierarchical compared with a typical small-scale society. Hunter-gatherer societies have no king, no general, no manager to boss people around. If some members have more influence, it is not because they are invested with some supernatural or birthright authority but because of the services they render to the community, for instance, in hunting, in war, and in coming through discussion to good collective decisions. This generalization holds even when a rigorous chain of command might be expected—as in societies plagued with constant warfare. ([Location 5024](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=5024)) - Revolutions in science proceed in a gentle manner. There is no need to chop off senior scientists’ heads; they can change their minds through “unforced agreement.”12 Ten years after Darwin had published The Origin of Species, three-quarters of British scientists had been at least partly convinced.13 Barely more than ten years after a convincing theory of plate tectonics was worked out, it had been integrated into textbooks. ([Location 5721](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B06XWFM3PP&location=5721))