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What it argues
The standard account of human reasoning treats it as a tool for individual problem-solving that happens to malfunction under certain conditions. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber propose a fundamentally different account: reason evolved not to help individuals think better alone but to help people argue with each other. Its primary function is social and communicative, not epistemic. This shift in frame recontextualizes what looks like a long list of cognitive defects.
The book's central concept is what they call the "argumentative theory of reasoning." Mercier and Sperber argue that most of the well-documented biases in human reasoning — confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, myside bias — are not bugs but features of a system designed to produce arguments for positions the reasoner already holds. This is useful in a social context: you need to be able to defend your views and evaluate others' arguments. The same faculty that makes us good at finding counterarguments to others' claims makes us bad at finding holes in our own.
What it gets right
- 1.
Reason evolved primarily as a social tool for argument and communication, not as a mechanism for individual belief formation or problem-solving.
- 2.
Confirmation bias and myside bias aren't malfunctions of a reasoning system that should be impartial. They're features of a system designed to advocate.
- 3.
People evaluate others' arguments more critically than their own. This asymmetry is what makes argument-based deliberation in groups potentially productive.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, working in the areas of cognitive and social psychology, evolutionary psychology, and epistemology. Dan Sperber is a French anthropologist and cognitive scientist affiliated with the Jean Nicod Institute and Central European University. Together they developed the argumentative theory of reasoning, first presented in a 2011 paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences that generated responses from more than two dozen researchers. The Enigma of Reason is their full-length development of that thesis.
