In the target article, Mercier & Sperber (M&S) brilliantly show a crucial relationship between argumentation and reasoning. But the relationship is not the one they claim to show.
Consider two individuals facing an adaptive challenge. A threat of some kind is about to confront them. One of the individuals, A, recognizes the threat; the other, B, fails, for whatever reason, to recognize it. The two individuals argue over the existence of the threat or, perhaps, its severity. Each argues compellingly for his or her point of view. After all, with inductive reasoning based on incomplete and often ambiguous information, arguments can have inductive strength but not deductive certainty; and their inductive strength does not necessarily correspond to their veridicality (as anyone will have observed who has seen a defense attorney gets off his guilty client scot free). A and B both act on the basis of their reasoning. A survives and B dies (as a result of a bear attack, a lightning strike, an automobile accident, a plane crash, or whatever the threat in question happened to be).
A and B both used their reasoning in the service of argumentation, but reasoning was adaptive by virtue of the veridicality of its conclusion, not by virtue of the persuasiveness of the arguments (which may or may not correspond to veridicality in real-world ambiguous situations with incomplete information). So reasoning could scarcely have evolved in the service of argumentation, because those wonderful arguers who did not perceive things veridically would have been less able to reproduce than those arguers who did perceive things veridically. The brilliant reasoners who argued wrongly regarding threats had many more opportunities to perish before reproducing than those reasoners, persuasive or not, who saw threats as they were.
The same phenomenon occurs at a group level. Consider global warming. Global warming threatens the existence of human and other life on the planet Earth, and yet deniers, including scientists, put the life of all human organisms on the planet–the replication of the species' genes and hence the survival of the species–at risk. Reasoning is being used in the service of argumentation, but not always for evolutionarily adaptive purposes, at least with respect to the genes of the individuals involved.
The opening view of M&S that “reasoning should produce its best results when used in argumentative contexts, most notably in group discussions” (sect. 1.2, para. 11) is clearly wrong, as are the arguments that follow from it. The problem is that in this quotation, as throughout the article, there is an ambiguity regarding the meaning of “best results.” If reasoning is about persuasiveness, perhaps the authors are right. But if reasoning is about veridicality, they are wrong.
Janis (Reference Janis1972) recognized the fallacy of the reasoning in his work on groupthink. He observed that groups of academically brilliant government officials could make horrible mistakes that were actually compounded by their being in groups. More generally, the phenomenon is referred to as “group polarization” (Moscovici & Zavalloni Reference Moscovici and Zavalloni1969). People like Robert McNamara and, more recently, Donald Rumsfeld, come to mind–people who, despite their academic brilliance, reasoned poorly, yet were able to persuade many by their (false) arguments. Stanovich (Reference Stanovich1993; Reference Stanovich2009) coined the irrational but often persuasive reasoning of IQ-smart people “dysrationalia” (for related ideas, see also Sternberg Reference Sternberg2002).
In the short run, reasoning in the service of argument may well be adaptive. For example, a job candidate who is persuasive is perhaps more likely to get the job than one who is unpersuasive; a politician who is persuasive is more likely to be elected or, at least, to be believed. But as recent presidential and other elections have shown, persuasiveness (at least to the masses) can be attained even by candidates who cannot string together a coherent sentence. In the long run, the arguments of demagogic politicians are likely to lead to chaos. In the same way, the arguments of unscrupulous but persuasive clergymen are leading to terrorist attacks today.
If, as the authors argue, “the main function of reasoning is to produce arguments to convince others rather than to find the best decision” (sect. 1.2, para. 11), then human survival is in serious jeopardy. In today's world, reasoning very likely is being used primarily to convince others rather than to find the best decision, but this use of reasoning is not evolutionarily adaptive for survival in the long run.
Perhaps, as a society, we are placing too much emphasis on reasoning in the service of argumentation, whether it is on college applications, in job interviews, or in elections. Instead, our society should place more emphasis on wisdom, the direction of reasoning (and other skills) toward a common good, over the long as well as the short term, through the infusion of positive ethical values (Sternberg et al. Reference Sternberg, Reznitskaya and Jarvin2007). In a microcosm, the target article represents what has gone wrong with society as a whole: Society has come to care more about reasoning in the service of persuasion than reasoning in the service of truth or even some kind of ethical good. This trend risks leading not to better adaptation of humans but, rather, to their ultimate destruction.
In the target article, Mercier & Sperber (M&S) brilliantly show a crucial relationship between argumentation and reasoning. But the relationship is not the one they claim to show.
Consider two individuals facing an adaptive challenge. A threat of some kind is about to confront them. One of the individuals, A, recognizes the threat; the other, B, fails, for whatever reason, to recognize it. The two individuals argue over the existence of the threat or, perhaps, its severity. Each argues compellingly for his or her point of view. After all, with inductive reasoning based on incomplete and often ambiguous information, arguments can have inductive strength but not deductive certainty; and their inductive strength does not necessarily correspond to their veridicality (as anyone will have observed who has seen a defense attorney gets off his guilty client scot free). A and B both act on the basis of their reasoning. A survives and B dies (as a result of a bear attack, a lightning strike, an automobile accident, a plane crash, or whatever the threat in question happened to be).
A and B both used their reasoning in the service of argumentation, but reasoning was adaptive by virtue of the veridicality of its conclusion, not by virtue of the persuasiveness of the arguments (which may or may not correspond to veridicality in real-world ambiguous situations with incomplete information). So reasoning could scarcely have evolved in the service of argumentation, because those wonderful arguers who did not perceive things veridically would have been less able to reproduce than those arguers who did perceive things veridically. The brilliant reasoners who argued wrongly regarding threats had many more opportunities to perish before reproducing than those reasoners, persuasive or not, who saw threats as they were.
The same phenomenon occurs at a group level. Consider global warming. Global warming threatens the existence of human and other life on the planet Earth, and yet deniers, including scientists, put the life of all human organisms on the planet–the replication of the species' genes and hence the survival of the species–at risk. Reasoning is being used in the service of argumentation, but not always for evolutionarily adaptive purposes, at least with respect to the genes of the individuals involved.
The opening view of M&S that “reasoning should produce its best results when used in argumentative contexts, most notably in group discussions” (sect. 1.2, para. 11) is clearly wrong, as are the arguments that follow from it. The problem is that in this quotation, as throughout the article, there is an ambiguity regarding the meaning of “best results.” If reasoning is about persuasiveness, perhaps the authors are right. But if reasoning is about veridicality, they are wrong.
Janis (Reference Janis1972) recognized the fallacy of the reasoning in his work on groupthink. He observed that groups of academically brilliant government officials could make horrible mistakes that were actually compounded by their being in groups. More generally, the phenomenon is referred to as “group polarization” (Moscovici & Zavalloni Reference Moscovici and Zavalloni1969). People like Robert McNamara and, more recently, Donald Rumsfeld, come to mind–people who, despite their academic brilliance, reasoned poorly, yet were able to persuade many by their (false) arguments. Stanovich (Reference Stanovich1993; Reference Stanovich2009) coined the irrational but often persuasive reasoning of IQ-smart people “dysrationalia” (for related ideas, see also Sternberg Reference Sternberg2002).
In the short run, reasoning in the service of argument may well be adaptive. For example, a job candidate who is persuasive is perhaps more likely to get the job than one who is unpersuasive; a politician who is persuasive is more likely to be elected or, at least, to be believed. But as recent presidential and other elections have shown, persuasiveness (at least to the masses) can be attained even by candidates who cannot string together a coherent sentence. In the long run, the arguments of demagogic politicians are likely to lead to chaos. In the same way, the arguments of unscrupulous but persuasive clergymen are leading to terrorist attacks today.
If, as the authors argue, “the main function of reasoning is to produce arguments to convince others rather than to find the best decision” (sect. 1.2, para. 11), then human survival is in serious jeopardy. In today's world, reasoning very likely is being used primarily to convince others rather than to find the best decision, but this use of reasoning is not evolutionarily adaptive for survival in the long run.
Perhaps, as a society, we are placing too much emphasis on reasoning in the service of argumentation, whether it is on college applications, in job interviews, or in elections. Instead, our society should place more emphasis on wisdom, the direction of reasoning (and other skills) toward a common good, over the long as well as the short term, through the infusion of positive ethical values (Sternberg et al. Reference Sternberg, Reznitskaya and Jarvin2007). In a microcosm, the target article represents what has gone wrong with society as a whole: Society has come to care more about reasoning in the service of persuasion than reasoning in the service of truth or even some kind of ethical good. This trend risks leading not to better adaptation of humans but, rather, to their ultimate destruction.