by Dan Sperber
14. Dehaene 1999.
15. Gilmore, McCarthy, and Spelke 2007.
16. Rozenblit and Keil 2002.
7. How We Use Reasons
1. The word “reason” is also used in a much broader sense as a synonym of cause, as in “The reason why the night is dark is that today is the new moon.” In this book, we have avoided using “reason” in this broad sense when there was any risk of confusion.
2. For a review of recent philosophical work on reasons relevant to our concerns, see Alvarez 2016.
3. Nagel 1976; Pritchard 2005; Williams 1981.
4. See, for instance, Baars 1993; Block 2007; Carruthers 2005; Chalmers 1996; Dehaene 2014; Dennett 1991; Graziano 2013; Rosenthal 2005.
5. Nisbett and Wilson 1977; see also Greenwald and Banaji 1995.
6. Carruthers 2011.
7. Darley and Latané 1968.
8. Latané and Rodin 1969.
9. Hannes Rakoczy (2012) underscores the confusion brought about by the variety of uses of the explicit/implicit distinction. Zoltan Dienes and Josef Perner (1999) do define “implicit” in a precise but somewhat idiosyncratic way, which would deserve a detailed discussion in another context.
10. See Jessen 2001.
11. Sperber and Wilson 2002.
8. Could Reason Be a Module?
1. Raz 2000, 2010; see also Wallace et al. 2004.
2. Carroll 1895. For a richer modern discussion, with some attention to psychology, see Kornblith 2012; Railton 2004.
3. See Köhler 1930; Ramachandran and Hubbard 2001. For recent relevant work on the issue, see Monaghan et al. 2014.
4. Green and Williams 2007.
5. As we argued in Chapter 3, see also Thompson 2014.
6. For an excellent example of this, read Robert Zaretsky and John Scott’s The Philosopher’s Quarrel (2009), where they describe how Jean-Jacques Rousseau stubbornly resisted David Hume’s sensible arguments in the name of his own intuition, bolstered by his own philosophical arguments in favor of intuition.
7. A point argued in detail by Proust 2013.
8. Mercier 2012.
9. On reputation in general, see Origgi 2015. On moral reputation, see Baumard, André, and Sperber 2013; Sperber and Baumard 2012.
10. The fit between this approach and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action (1987) would be worth exploring.
11. Frederick 2005.
9. Reasoning
1. Mercier and Sperber 2009; Sperber 1997.
2. It is common to call “intuitive,” in an extended sense, a reflective conclusion for which one has an intuitive argument. This is a harmless extension of meaning, and we do not object to it in general. In this book, however, where we discuss the relationship between intuitive reasons and their reflective conclusions, we use “intuition” and “intuitive” in their strict, nonextended sense.
3. Whitehead and Russell 1912.
4. Sometimes reasoning also resorts to pictures or gestures, which may provide better insights than words, but typically these insights are verbally invoked in support of a verbal conclusion. See, for instance, Stenning and Oberlander 1995.
5. It can be argued that a prior ability to metarepresent representations is what made language possible in the evolution of the species and what makes language acquisition possible in individual development (Origgi and Sperber 2000; Scott-Phillips 2014; Sperber and Wilson 2002). This is not a universally accepted view. For the opposite view that language is what makes metarepresentations possible and hence comes before metarepresentation both in evolution and in development, see Dennett 2000; De Villiers 2000.
6. Blakemore 2002; Ducrot 1984; Ducrot and Anscombre 1983; Hall 2007; Wilson 2016.
7. As stressed by Harman 1986.
8. On the reductio ad absurdum in a dialogical perspective, see Dutilh Novaes 2016.
9. See, for example, Evans and Over 2004.
10. For a detailed discussion, see Carston 2002; Wilson and Sperber 2002.
11. See Chapter 12 and Mercier et al. in press.
12. Carruthers 2006.
13. See Oaksford and Chater 2007; Stenning and Van Lambalgen 2012. Both books, by the way, propose a reinterpretation of Byrne’s “suppression effect,” that is, the fact that modus ponens inference can be suppressed by adding a logically irrelevant but pragmatically relevant premise, as we saw in Chapter 1.
14. We are not denying, of course, that there are questions that can be resolved by using syllogism or other forms of deduction in a strict and literal manner. As the case of the Wason four-card selection task we discussed in Chapter 2 illustrates, even when a problem can be solved deductively, people often fail to realize this. Nevertheless, especially when people argue about such problems, logical considerations may end up being invoked normatively.
15. This is an issue that is raised in Louis Lee, Goodwin, and Johnson-Laird 2008.
16. Stanovich 2012.
10. Reason
1. Darwin 1981, p. 46.
2. Ibid., pp. 188–189.
3. See, for instance, Einhorn and Hogarth 1981; Nisbett et al. 1983.
4. Cosmides and Tooby 1987, 1989; Tooby and Cosmides 1989.
5. Cosmides 1989.
6. Girotto et al. 2001; Sperber, Cara, and Girotto 1995.
7. For an argument to the same effect via a different route, see Kruglanski and Gigerenzer 2011.
8. Heyes 2003; Sterelny 2003.
9. Mercier and Sperber 2011.
10. Bicchieri 2006.
11. Malle 2004.
12. Reid 2000, pp. 193–194.
13. Mascaro and Morin 2014.
14. For recent ideas on the relationship between cooperation and communication, see Godfrey-Smith and Martínez 2013; Skyrms 1996, 2010; Sterelny 2012; Tomasello 2010.
15. Axelrod 1984; Blais 1987.
16. Baumard, André, and Sperber 2013.
17. Sperber et al. 2010.
18. Clément 2010; Harris 2012; Mascaro and Sperber 2009.
19. Montefiore 2003, p. 360.
20. For an interpretation of the history of classical logic that focuses on its argumentative roots, see Dutilh Novaes 2015.
21. We are not the first to develop an argumentative theory of reasoning. Others (for instance, Billig 1996; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958; Toulmin 1958) have maintained that reasoning is primarily about producing and evaluating arguments. They have done so mostly on introspective grounds and in a philosophical perspective. We may be more original in having done so (Mercier 2016a; Mercier in press; Mercier and Sperber 2011) on empirical grounds and in a naturalistic and evolutionary perspective (see also Dessalles 2007, who develops a different evolutionary perspective where argumentation plays an important role).
22. On the distinction between adaptation and beneficial side effects, see Sober 1993; for more on the evolution of sea turtles’ limbs, see Wyneken, Godfrey, and Bels 2007, pp. 97–138.
11. Why Is Reasoning Biased?
1. “Linus C. Pauling Dies at 93; Chemist and Voice for Peace,” New York Times, August 21, 1994, available at http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0228.html.
2. Watson 1997, Kindle location 395.
3. Maurice Wilkins, BBC radio 4 interview, 1997, Oregon State University Libraries, available at http://oregondigital.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/dna&CISOPTR=166&CISOBOX=1&REC=1.
4. “Linus Pauling Rebuts New Mayo Study on Vitamin C,” September 28, 1979, p. 2, available at https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/MMBBKK (see also Collins and Pinch 2005).
5. Creagan et al. 1979.
6. Moertel et al. 1985.
7. Collins and Pinch 2005.
8. Pauling and Herman 1989.
9. Ibid., p. 6837.
10. Ibid., p. 6835.
11. Ibid., p. 6835; emphasis added on the derogatory “described.”
12. Mansel Davies, “Obituary: Professor Linus Pauling,” Independent, August 21, 1994, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peo
ple/obituary-professor-linus-pauling-1377923.html.
13. Oxford English Dictionary, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bias.
14. Tversky and Kahneman 1973.
15. E.g., Gigerenzer 2007.
16. Funder 1987; Haselton and Buss 2000.
17. Ings and Chittka 2008.
18. Liszkowski et al. 2004.
19. Crombie 1971, pp. 84ff. For another perspective on Grosseteste and falsification, see Serene 1979.
20. Both citations are from Bacon 1620, bk. 1, p. 105. Crombie 1971 links Grosseteste and Bacon, and Urbach 1982 points out the commonalities between Bacon and Popper on this issue.
21. Popper 1963, p. 6.
22. Mynatt, Doherty, and Tweney 1977.
23. Wason 1968, p. 142.
24. Ball et al. 2003; for related methodology, see Evans 1996.
25. Lucas and Ball 2005.
26. Nickerson 1998, p. 175.
27. Kuhn 1991, computed from table 5.4, p. 142, with 160 participants.
28. Sanitioso, Kunda, and Fong 1990.
29. Taber and Lodge 2006.
30. Johnson-Laird and Byrne 2002; Stanovich and West 2008; Stanovich, West, and Toplak 2013.
31. Evans 1989, p. 41; although not all demonstrations are equally convincing, see Mercier 2016b.
32. “Julie Burchill and Psychopaths,” n.d., available at http://jonathanronson.tumblr.com/post/43312919747/julie-burchill-and-psychopaths.
33. Evans and Over 1996, p. 20.
34. Stanovich 2004, p. 134.
35. Lilienfeld, Ammirati, and Landfield 2009, p. 391.
36. Nickerson 1998, p. 205.
37. Bacon 1620.
38. Thaxter et al. 2010.
39. Evans 2007; Kahneman 2003b; Stanovich 2004.
40. Stanovich 2004, p. 134.
41. Evans 1989, p. 42.
42. Pyke 1984.
43. For foraging, see, e.g., Hill et al. 1987.
44. Allen et al. 2009.
45. Ibid., p. 1083.
46. Shaw 1996, p. 80.
47. Mercier and Sperber 2011.
48. The term has been previously used with slightly different meanings by, e.g., Baron 1995 and Perkins 1989.
49. Cicero, De Inventione, bk. 1, chap. 52, trans. C. D. Yonge, available at http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/cicero/dnv1-4.htm#97.
50. Indeed, being defended by a lawyer who does not display a consistent myside bias could be grounds for appeal because the counsel has “undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process,” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), available at http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/466/668/case.html (ineffective assistance of counsel).
51. For previous uses of the analogy, see, e.g., Knobe 2010; Tetlock 2002.
12. Quality Control
1. Cicero, De Oratore, bk. 1, chap. 2, p. 7, trans. J. S. Watson, available at http://archive.org/details/ciceroonoratorya00ciceuoft.
2. Ibid., bk. 3, chap. 21, p. 214.
3. Kuhn 1991, p. 87.
4. Ibid.
5. Nisbett and Ross 1980, p. 119.
6. Perkins 1985, p. 568.
7. Levinson 2006; see also Enfield 2013.
8. Loosely based on an example provided by Levinson 2005.
9. Dingemanse and Enfield 2015; Dingemanse et al. 2015.
10. Resnick et al. 1993, pp. 362–363.
11. Kuhn, Shaw, and Felton 1997.
12. Boudry, Paglieri, and Pigliucci 2015.
13. Hahn and Hornikx 2016; Hahn and Oaksford 2007; Oaksford and Hahn 2004.
14. For more evidence that people, at least when they are motivated, are good at evaluating arguments, see the literature on persuasion and attitude change. A good review is provided by Petty and Wegener 1998.
15. Trouche et al. 2016.
16. Trouche, Shao, and Mercier submitted; see also Trouche, Sander, and Mercier 2014.
13. The Dark Side of Reason
1. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Project Gutenberg, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3070/3070-h/3070-h.htm.
2. “Bertillonnage,” Wikipedia, available at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertillonnage.
3. Blair 1901, p. 395.
4. Reinach 1903, Kindle locations 2911–2924.
5. Whyte 2008, p. 78.
6. Anonymous 1900, p. 330.
7. Ibid., p. 344.
8. Ibid., p. 362.
9. Ibid., p. 369.
10. Anonymous 1904.
11. Ibid.
12. Koriat, Lichtenstein, and Fischhoff 1980. Note that overconfidence is a complex phenomenon, and reasoning is not its only cause.
13. Sadler and Tesser 1973; for review, see Tesser 1978.
14. Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard 1975. On the role of reasoning, see Anderson, Lepper, and Ross 1980; Anderson, New, and Speer 1985.
15. Keynes 1989, p. 252.
16. See, for instance, Kay 2011.
17. Janis 1982.
18. Myers and Bishop 1970.
19. Myers and Bach 1974.
20. Sunstein 2002.
21. E.g., Kay 2011.
22. Preface to Halberstam 2001, p. xi, written by John McCain.
23. Kunda 1990, p. 480.
24. Nickerson 1998, p. 197.
25. Dunning, Meyerowitz, and Holzberg 1989.
26. Kay 2011, p. 217.
27. See Scott-Kakures 2001.
28. Scott-Phillips, Dickins, and West 2011; Tinbergen 1963.
29. Millikan 1987, p. 34.
30. Dehaene 2009.
31. Keynes 1936, p. vii.
14. A Reason for Everything
1. Hall, Johansson, and Strandberg 2012.
2. Nisbett and Wilson 1977.
3. Franklin 1799.
4. Wilson et al. 1993.
5. Simonson 1989.
6. Dijksterhuis 2004.
7. Hsee 1999.
8. Simonson 1989.
9. Hsee et al. 1999.
10. Thompson and Norton 2011.
11. Rozin, Millman, and Nemeroff 1986.
12. See Thompson, Hamilton, and Rust 2005.
13. Tversky and Shafir 1992, p. 305.
14. Or at least the participants thought so; see Simonson 1990.
15. Thompson and Norton 2011.
16. Morabia 2006.
17. Simonson and Nye 1992, p. 442. We’ve adjusted the dollar amounts to broadly take inflation up to publication date into account.
18. Arkes and Ayton 1999.
19. McAfee, Mialon, and Mialon 2010 make a similar point.
15. The Bright Side of Reason
1. Quotes from 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet, original story by Reginald Rose (1957; Beverly Hills, CA: MGM, 2008), DVD.
2. Habermas 1975, p. 108.
3. Twenty-seven percent for the Harvard students of Cosmides 1989; 18 percent for the top one-quarter students of Stanovich and West 2000.
4. Johnson-Laird and Byrne 2002.
5. Oaksford and Chater 2003, p. 305.
6. Open Science Collaboration 2015.
7. Mercier, Trouche, et al. 2015.
8. Trouche, Sander, and Mercier 2014.
9. See ibid. for references.
10. Koriat 2012; Levin and Druyan 1993.
11. Moshman and Geil 1998; Trognon 1993.
12. Trouche, Sander, and Mercier 2014.
13. See Laughlin 2011.
14. See the references in Kravitz and Martin 1986.
15. Ringelmann 1913, p. 10, translated by Kravitz and Martin 1986.
16. Latané, Williams, and Harkins 1979.
17. E.g., Mullen, Johnson, and Salas 1991.
18. Nemeth et al. 2004. This article shows that dissent increases only the quantity, not the quality, of idea generation, but further evidence suggests that quality of idea generation is also improved by dissent; see, for instance, Nemeth and Ormiston 2007; Smith 2008. For more evidence of the positive role played by dissension in group discussion, see, e.g., Schulz-Hardt et al. 2006.
19.
Montaigne 1870, p. 540.
20. Barry Popik, “Never Make Forecasts, Especially about the Future,” October 30, 2010, available at http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/never_make_forecasts_especially_about_the_future/.
21. Tetlock 2005.
22. Ibid., p. 51.
23. See Silver 2012.
24. Tetlock 2005, p. 61.
25. Ibid., p. 123.
26. Ibid., p. 62.
27. Ibid., pp. 121ff.
28. Ibid., p. 128.
29. Dalkey and Helmer 1963, p. 461.
30. E.g., Linstone and Turoff 1976; Rowe and Wright 1999.
31. Yaniv and Kleinberger 2000.
32. Rowe and Wright 1996.
33. True story … “Paul the Octopus,” Wikipedia, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus.
34. Liberman et al. 2012; Minson, Liberman, and Ross 2011.
35. Mellers et al. 2014.
36. Sunstein, Kahneman, and Schkade 1998, p. 2129.
37. Caenegem 1987, p. 14.
38. Blackstone 1979, p. 380.
39. Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. (1978), p. 234, cited in Ellsworth 1989, full text available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0435_0223_ZO.html.
40. Braman 2009; Sunstein et al. 2007.
41. E.g., Sandys and Dillehay 1995.
42. Hastie, Penrod, and Pennington 1983.
43. Ibid., p. 60.
44. Ellsworth 1989, p. 217.
45. Ellsworth 2003, p. 1406.
46. Mercier, Trouche, et al. 2015.
47. Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, 1786, Digital History, available at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1357.
16. Is Human Reason Universal?