Department of Educational Psychology
Date of this Version
2018
Citation
Published in Human Development 61 (2018), pp 60–64.
DOI: 10.1159/000484448
Abstract
In 2011, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber published an influential article [Mercier & Sperber, 2011] arguing that human reasoning evolved for the purpose of argumentation and serves that purpose well. Additional publications followed and now, in The Enigma of Reason, Mercier and Sperber [2017] flesh out their theory. Individual reasoning is often fallacious, in their view, because it applies reasoning beyond the scope of its evolutionary purpose. Logic, rather than a basis for reasoning, is a formalized system developed by logicians that has little connection to actual human reasoning.
This is a rich and readable book that presents many intriguing studies from the literature of human reasoning and addresses diverse philosophical and theoretical conceptualizations of human rationality. In the end, however, I believe it has two serious, and closely related, flaws: it ignores development and, as a result, misunderstands the nature of logic and its role in reasoning.
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Comments
Copyright © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel. Used by permission.