Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory

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Response/Mercier & Sperber: Why do humans reason?problems and the adoption of public policy proposals that arecomprehensive enough. Public policy choice and implementationis like an experiment in whether dynamic feedback fromthe policy implementation will render another session of democraticdeliberation (Anderson 2006). Also, according to anotherpragmatist, C. S. Peirce, a proposition could be true if it cansurvive the test of best reasons, evidence, and arguments(Misak 2009). Since almost no one would deem the seeking oftruth an unworthy goal, it holds that deliberation in a democraticregime would offer the best chance of achieving this goal (Talisse2009).As already mentioned, the typically adopted concept criteria ofdeliberative democracy include the state of disagreement amongthe participants and the task of reaching collective decisions(Thompson 2008). Therefore, a good design of deliberativedemocracy would be compatible with the propositions by M&Sabout reasoning for arguments. Accordingly, all individuals, nomatter whether they are experts or laypersons, are subject toproactive reasoning. When these individuals deliberate alone,they usually reason to confirm, rather than scrutinize, their originalarguments. It is better to conduct group reasoning such thateach member can contribute to mutual non-proactive evaluationsof arguments and conclusions not in their favor. For M&S,“[a]rgumentation is uniquely effective in overcoming disagreementsthat are likely to occur, in particular in relatively equalitariangroups” (sect. 1.2, para. 9).Also, to legitimize the conclusions reached through deliberativedemocracy, it is usually proposed that in the process ofmutual justification (presenting and responding to reasonsintended to justify a political decision [Gutmann & Thompson2004]), deliberative democracy should have such characteristicsas public spiritedness (arguments for common good), equalrespect for each participant, accommodation (retaining the possibilityof collaboration on other issues), and equal participation(no domination phenomenon) (Thompson 2008). The epistemicgood of deliberative democracy comes from engaging peoplewith different motivations for group reasoning and subjectingeach version of reasoning to mutual scrutiny. Thus, currenttheoretical proposals have shown that deliberative democracy isone of the best designs for facilitating good public policy, asimplied in M&S’s theory.Empirical research into the effectiveness of deliberativedemocracy is still in its burgeoning stage, but the qualifiedpromise of deliberative democracy demonstrates that deliberationis not an easy task (Ryfe 2005). A good design of deliberativedemocracy should establish rules to maintain the theoreticalaims, allow people to tell stories to make cultural meanings inaddition to making cognitive sense, encourage leadership thatfacilitates deliberation, endeavor to relate the outcome of deliberationto the participants, and finally create environments tofacilitate learning how to deliberate (Ryfe 2005). All thesecomplicated issues were not addressed by M&S and couldsupplement their propositions as applied outside of the experimentalfields.Three conditions are needed for deliberative democracy toachieve epistemic good. First, when it comes to equal participationin deliberative democracy, the explicit and implicit standardsfor the concepts used in the communication might leadto the exclusion of the concepts used by the marginalizedgroups to make cultural meanings. In this kind of “hermeneuticinjustice” (Fricker 2007), the majority’s conceptual frameworkmight squeeze out or mask the minority’s specific experiences.For example, in John Rawls’ formulation of public reason, ifthe contents of claims contain concepts that are not easily availableand assessable by the public, these claims would be excludedfrom the public domains because they contain no recognitionworthyreasons (Morgan-Olsen 2010). However, we should notforget that the frames and ways we observe and analyze thingsoften constrain our decisions and results (Wu 2008). Therefore,we should uphold an ethic of epistemic humility by which wetake serious novel concepts and experiences presented indeliberation.Second, we should recognize that if the epistemic goal of deliberativedemocracy were to seek truth, then the dynamism in theprocess would only point us to the deflationist version of truth.There is no way we could ascertain the realist version of truththrough deliberation over the feedback from the implementationof public policies. Sticking to the realist version of truth woulddisrupt the function of deliberation, bringing it to a halt. Third,pursuing the previous two conditions, we have to analyze theexplicit and implicit operations of microscopic framing powersempirically during group reasoning. Here, I do not insist onthe abolition of all these operations of framing powers (Lengwiler2008), but we should understand whether the minority conceptsand frames are given their due course for sense making andmeaning making. Based on the findings, we could furtherdesign the rules that would meet the requirements of epistemichumility.Authors’ ResponseArgumentation: Its adaptiveness and efficacydoi:10.1017/S0140525X10003031Hugo Mercier a and Dan Sperber ba Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program, University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia, PA 19104; b Jean Nicod Institute (EHESS-ENS-CNRS), 75005Paris, France; and Department of Philosophy, Central European University,Budapest, Hungary.hmercier@sas.upenn.edu dan@sperber.frhttp://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/ http://www.dan.sperber.frAbstract: Having defended the usefulness of our definition ofreasoning, we stress that reasoning is not only for convincingbut also for evaluating arguments, and that as such it has anepistemic function. We defend the evidence supporting thetheory against several challenges: People are good informalarguers, they reason better in groups, and they have aconfirmation bias. Finally, we consider possible extensions, firstin terms of process-level theories of reasoning, and second inthe effects of reasoning outside the lab.We are grateful to the commentators for their support,their insightful criticisms, and their useful suggestions.Even when we felt we were being misunderstood, welearned – or so we hope – how to make our case in aclearer and more compelling manner. In answeringthese commentaries, we focus in turn on the evolutionand the function of reasoning, on its strengths andbiases, and on its mode of operation. But first we have todefend our definition of reasoning against severalchallenges.R1. Different definitions of reasoningIn the target article, we defined reasoning as the mental actof constructing or evaluating an argument that is at leastpartly explicit In particular, it must contain both a conclusionand reasons to accept this conclusion, even ifsome of the steps leading from these reasons to the conclusionsare left implicit. In this sense, reasoning is in94 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2011) 34:2
Response/Mercier & Sperber: Why do humans reason?contrast with ordinary intuitive inference, a process thatyields a conclusion without articulating the reasons toaccept it. So far, our definition is close enough to philosophicaland commonsense use of the term reasoning and atodds with the now widespread use in psychology of“reasoning” as a mere synonym of inference. Needless tosay, several definitions of reasoning may each target aphenomenon worth studying.In line with much evolutionary psychology, weassumed that the mind is an articulation of many fairlyspecialized mechanisms; in particular, mechanisms ofintuitive inference that are specialized for a specific cognitivedomain or task such as recognizing faces, interpretingtheir expressions, processing frequencies, and decodingspeech. Even though it contrasts with ordinary intuitiveinference, reasoning as we describe it is itself a form ofhigher-order intuitive inference with a specializeddomain and task: It delivers intuitions about reasons-conclusionsrelationships. This way of distinguishing reasoningproper from other inferential mechanisms is largelyrooted in the same kind of observations and concernsthat have led to the development of dual-process ordual-system approaches to reasoning (as we have discussedin greater detail in Mercier & Sperber 2009).Several commentaries defend a different definition ofreasoning that may be closer to that of inference ingeneral or to a more standard dual-process approach tosystem 2 reasoning.Khlentzos & Stevenson suggest that some type ofsystem 2 reasoning must have evolved to arbitratebetween contradictory system 1 outputs. Unless a veryliberal definition of system 2 is adopted – one that encompassesmuch more than reasoning as it is defined here – itseems as though such problems are routinely solved bysystem 1 itself. Any cognitively complex organism will befaced with contradictory outputs – for instance, when perceptioncontradicts memory because the environment haschanged – and must have ways to arbitrate among them.Reasoning may help accomplish this task in some difficultcases, but it is specifically geared toward this end – andthis would be true even with a much broader definitionof the term reasoning.Poletiek makes a comparable proposal regarding actionselection, using the example of people looking for their keysand having to choose between different search strategies.According to her, it is mostly a consideration of costs andbenefits that decide whether the search is “confirmatory”or “falsificatory.” But, as we suggested, such choices arecommonly made without reasoning proper (a point Poletiekseems to agree with). Evolved intuitive mechanisms ofaction selection are designed to take into account costsand benefits without producing the reasons for theirchoices. Reasoning, on the other hand, produces suchreasons and hence a justification for a course of actionwithout directly triggering it. Narvaez suggests in thesame vein that reasoning “includes figuring out whatcourse of action to take” (para. 2). While reasoning is sometimesused in decision making – as reviewed in section 5 ofthe target article – the vast majority of our actions areguided by intuitions and so fall outside of the scope ofreasoning as defined and thus outside the scope of thearticle, as well.More generally, thinking and action selection involvemore than just domain-specific intuitive inferences andreflective reasoning. In many dual-process models,system 2 is in fact likely to encompass mechanisms otherthan reasoning. Evans suggests hypothetical thinking –the ability to represent future situations. Narvaez refersto some forms of elaborated planning. Connolly & Rebtalk of mechanisms designed to avoid decisions wewould regret, making interesting suggestions regardingways to eliminate some reasoning biases – in particularreason-based choice. These authors point out that thesemechanisms can directly lead to good outcomes withoutinvolving argumentation, and see this as an objection toour evolutionary argument. But these mechanisms donot qualify as reasoning under our definition – they arenot necessarily reflective, they do not deal with arguments,and so on. Still, these suggestion point towards an interestingdirection of research. While system 1 is commonlyseen as a set of difference mechanisms, system 2 is oftenconsidered to be more unitary. It is also possiblehowever to view system 2 as comprising several differentmechanisms, such as reasoning, planning, imagination,and strategic thinking, each with a specific function.What might justify seeing these different mechanisms aspart of a single system is, for instance, their heavy use ofworking memory or of metarepresentational machinery.If different system 2 mechanisms shared such commonresources, this might help explain the covariation oftraits measured by various measures of cognitive abilitystressed by Evans.Our definition of reasoning may be debatable, but theargumentative approach to reasoning is about reasoningas we defined it. To object to this definition, it is notenough to offer another definition that may be reasonableand useful. What would have to be shown is that ours failsto identify a phenomenon with enough autonomy andintegrity to be a proper object of study and insight.R2. Evolution and function of reasoningA number of objections and suggestions were based, wefeel, on a partial or, in some cases, mistaken understandingof our hypothesis on the evolution and the function ofreasoning. The misunderstanding we are most eager tocorrect consists in attributing to us the view that reasoninghas only rhetorical rather than both rhetorical and epistemicgoals. We didn’t argue that reasoning is designed onlyto find arguments in order to persuade others (Godfrey-Smith & Yegnashankaran; Poletiek). We don’t holdthat epistemic goals should be poorly served by reasoning(Khlentzos & Stevenson; Kuhn), or that mere rhetoric isall it takes to influence people (Narvaez; Sternberg). Nordoes it follow from our account that people should hardlyever change their mind (Wolfe). On the contrary, reasoningevolved in part to make people change their mind bygiving them good reasons to do so. These misunderstandingsmay be linked to the fact that, in the target article, wedevoted more space to the production of arguments bycommunicators (whose goal is indeed to persuade) thanto the evaluation of these arguments by the audience(whose goal is to be informed). This imbalance reflectedthe present state of the literature we surveyed ratherthan a theoretical bias. Actually, the argumentativetheory would not make evolutionary sense if argumentsBEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2011) 34:2 95
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