The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding

by Dan Sperber

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  Illustration Credits

  Figure 4. Adelson’s checkershadow illusion. © 1995 Edward H. Adelson, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT.

  Figure 7. The trajectory of a desert ant. R. Wehner and S. Wehner, “Insect Navigation: Use of Maps or Ariadne’s Thread?” Ethology, Ecology & Evolution 2, no. 1 (1 May 1990): 27–48. Figure 2. © 1990 Taylor & Francis. Courtesy of Rüdiger Wehner.

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  Figure 12. Infants see a caterpillar nibble at a piece of cheese. Redrawn from Luca Surian, Stefanie Caldi, and Dan Sperber, “Attribution of Beliefs by 13-Month-Old Infants.” Psychological Science 18, no. 7 (August 2007): 580–586. Figure 1a. © 2007 Association for Psychological Science.

  Acknowledgments

  This book is based on joint work on reasoning that we began in 2005. Work on the book itself started in 2010. Many people and institutions have encouraged and helped us along the way. Both as individuals and together, we have had numerous opportunities to present, develop, and revise our ideas at conferences and talks in departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy around the world. In particular, we were invited to present an early version of the main ideas of this book as the Chandaria Lectures at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of London in 2011. Hugo taught classes on reasoning and argumentation at the University of
Pennsylvania; in the Cogmaster, an interdisciplinary academic program in Paris; and at the University of Neuchâtel. Dan taught a course based on this work in the departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest in 2013. On all these occasions and in countless informal conversations, we have benefited from comments, suggestions, and criticisms from more friends, colleagues, and students than we are able to name here. To all of them, we are grateful.

  Over all these years, we have enjoyed the personal and intellectual support of many close colleagues and friends, in particular Jean-Baptiste André, Nicolas Baumard, Stéphane Bernard, Cristina Bicchieri, Maurice Bloch, Pascal Boyer, Susan Carey, Coralie Chevallier, Nicolas Claidière, Fabrice Clément, Gergo Csibra, Dan Dennett, Ophelia Deroy, Nadine Fresco, Gyuri Gergely, Abel Gerschenfeld, Christophe Heintz, Larry Hirschfeld, Pierre Jacob, Hélène Landemore, Christine Langlois, Hanna Marno, Olivier Mascaro, Olivier Morin, Tiffany Morisseau, Ira Noveck, Gloria Origgi, Guy Politzer, Jérôme Prado, Louis de Saussure, Thom Scott-Phillips, Barry Smith, Brent Strickland, Denis Tatone, Radu Umbres, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Deirdre Wilson, and Hiroshi Yama. Thank you all!

  We were both inspired by our friendship and collaborations with Vittorio Girotto, a leading figure in the contemporary study of reasoning. He died in April 2016 at the age of fifty-nine, and we miss him.

  We are most grateful to colleagues who have read the manuscript or parts of it and provided us with very helpful comments: Clark Barrett, Hannoch Ben-Yami, Pascal Boyer, Peter Carruthers, George Gafalvi, Pierre Jacob, Philip Johnson-Laird, Olivier Morin, Ira Noveck, Josef Perner, Philip Pettit, Thom Scott-Phillips, John Watson, Deirdre Wilson, and one anonymous reviewer for Harvard University Press.

  We offer our gratitude to John and Max Brockman, our agents, and to Ian Malcolm, our editor, and his team at Harvard University Press.

  Hugo benefited from the financial backing of the Direction Générale de l’Armement (thanks to Didier Bazalgette in particular); the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program at the University of Pennsylvania (with the generous support of Steven F. Goldstone); the University of Neuchâtel’s Cognitive Science group and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione grant no. PZ00P1_142388); and, finally, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he now works, having joined the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod. Most of his contributions to the empirical research reported in the book were made in collaboration with his two brilliant doctoral students, Thomas Castelain and Emmanuel Trouche. His deepest thanks go to his families—the family that supported him throughout his wandering years as a young student (and keeps doing so!), and the family that supports him now—Thérèse, Christopher, and Arthur. He should be working less and spending more time with them.

  Dan would like to thank the members, staff, and students of the departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest and of the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris. His research has been supported by a grant from the European Research Council (grant number: ERC-2013-SyG, Constructing Social Minds: Communication, Coordination and Cultural Transmission, ERC, grant agreement no. [609619]). His joie de vivre has been supported throughout these years by his sons, Nathan and Leo.

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  First published in the United States of America by Harvard University Press 2017

  First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2017

  Copyright © Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, 2017

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

  Cover image from the title page of Discourse on the method, Dioptrics, Meteors, and Geometry, by René Descartes (1596–1650), edition published in Paris, 1668.

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  Design: Jim Stoddart

  ISBN: 978-1-846-14558-2